Articles

On this page we are sharing various articles about the Rice Portrait. You can also read articles about the Rice Portrait in the Press Section

Jane Austen to the Life?

This article by Professor Claudia Johnson, Murray Professor of English Literature at Princeton University, was published in the Times Literary Supplement on Friday 30th August 2013. We are very appreciative of the support of Professor Johnson, over a period of many years.

The world is always interested in Jane Austen. This year alone, several continents have been abuzz with the 200th anniversary of Pride and Prejudice (as though it were the first novel Austen published); a twelve-foot statue of Colin Firth/Mr Darcy now looms out of the Serpentine in Hyde Park (as though it had any business being there); and after much fanfare, a ludicrously prettified Victorian image of Jane Austen is to appear on the new £10 note, along with a quotation about the pleasures of reading – words originally uttered, as many have observed, by one of her most despicable characters. In the midst of all this flummery, the emergence of new information about Jane Austen ought to be welcome. And it would now seem that there is decisive evidence that the “Rice Portrait” of Jane Austen (seen here in a photograph from 1910) is indeed an authentic likeness of the novelist, made in her lifetime…Read more HERE

Spontaneous Composite Portraits of Jane Austen

This article by Lance Bertelsen, Iris Howard Regents Professor in English Literature, University of Texas at Austin, was published in Persuasions On-Line in 2014.

One evening, in an attempt to compare the Rice, Stanier Clarke, and Cassandra Austen portraits of Jane Austen, I equalized the size and angle of the heads, erased the lines under the eyes of the Cassandra portrait, and placed the three in a horizontal configuration on my computer screen in order to better see the relative disposition of features. At some point I decided to move the Cassandra portrait closer to the Rice and inadvertently dragged it on top of the other when, to my shock, a new face fleetingly emerged that looked like a 20 year old woman done in the style of Gainsborough…Read more HERE

The Late Brian Sewell and the Rice Portrait

This article, by writer and art critic Brian Sewell was written after the failure of the Rice Portrait to sell at Christie’s auction in New York, in April 2007.

Eight days ago Christie’s failed  to sell at auction the only painting that has a credible claim to be a portrait of Jane Austen, darling of the commissioning editors of television channels, darling of the literati of Islington and Kensington, and darling, one must presume, of the men of letters of New York, for it was thither that Christie’s sent it to be sold. Perhaps that was a mistake, for had the picture been on view in London for some weeks the debate about its authenticity could have been wide open and the obstreperous doubters sent empty away. As things happened, for it to have been sent abroad for sale seemed the clearest possible indication that the National Portrait Gallery, guardian of the nation’s iconography, had no interest in acquiring it and supported the few who have clamorously (and in one case mischievously) claimed that it does not depict Jane Austen…Read more HERE

Brimful of Tricks

This article, written by journalist Henrietta Foster and Professor Kathryn Sutherland, Emeritus Professor; St Anne's College, Oxford University, was published in the Times Literary Supplement on 09 July 2014. We have added our comments to the article.

Very few people have seen the Rice portrait, as it were, in the flesh – it remains in private hands. Those who have say it is a large, almost life-size painting of a young adolescent girl in a white cotton muslin frock tied under the bust by a thin puce-coloured ribbon. The girl is wearing a gold locket and earrings, and in her right hand is an unfurled emerald green parasol…Read more HERE

A Literary Portrait Re-Instated

In 1996 Deirdre Le Faye published an article, A Literary Portrait Re-Examined, in the journal The Book Collector, in which she claimed that the Rice Portrait is a portrait of a distance cousin of Jane Austen, Mary Ann Campion by the Reverend Matthew William Peters. You can read our response to this article HERE.

JANE AUSTEN, UNCLE FRANCIS AND OZIAS HUMPHRY AT SEAL, 1788

This is an excerpt from Terry Townsend’s book, Jane Austen’s Kent. Mr Townsend’s research demonstrates that a clear connection existed between Ozias Humphry and the Austen family in 1788, when Humphry's portrait of Jane as a young girl was initiated. His book is an entertaining and lively guide to the Kentish places that are so significant in the Austen family history, and we strongly recommend it to anyone interested in the real life of Jane herself. You can read more HERE