The Provenance of the Rice Portrait

 Austen scholar R W Chapman wrote in 1948 that the provenance of the Rice Portrait has ‘a pedigree that any layman may think watertight’ and so it is.

There are five primary documents which support the provenance of the Rice Portrait including a note written by Fanny Caroline Lefroy, Jane Austen’s great-niece, in 1884/5, a letter from Dr Thomas Harding Newman dated 30 December 1880 and a letter written by John Rouse Bloxam dated 26 March 1883. These letters are reproduced in the Primary Evidence Section.

As art critic Brian Sewell wrote in 2007: The authenticity of any painting by Botticelli, for example, with such an unbroken provenance, would be the more highly-prized for it and accepted without question.

The provenance of the Rice Portrait is firmly documented right back to Jane Austen’s generation, to her second cousin and exact contemporary Thomas Austen and there is ample evidence that it was Thomas’ grandfather, Francis Austen (1697-1791) who commissioned the portrait. You can read more about this below and in the Ozias Humphry Section.

Francis Austen (1697-1791)

Starting out, according to Jane Austen’s brother Henry, ‘with £800 and a bundle of pens’, by 1788 Francis Austen had become an immensely rich and successful lawyer and a major landowner in the counties of Essex and Kent. His speciality in law was the settling of large estates; his skill in this field had brought him as clients some of the wealthiest and most influential families in England, among them the Dorsets, the Berkeleys, and the Cravens. Like Francis Austen, all these families patronized the portraitist Ozias Humphry. In 1788 Francis Austen was 90 years old. His second wife Jane - Jane Austen's godmother – had died some years earlier and Francis in his old age had settled into the role of a benevolent family patriarch. Ozias Humphry, an artist much favoured by Francis's principal employer John Frederick Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset, had already painted Francis twice - once at the Duke's behest, and once at his own.

Francis Austen had always supported his nephew George Austen, Jane Austen’s father, paying for his schooling and providing him with church livings. We believe that in 1788 he commissioned the portraits of his great-nieces, Jane and Cassandra Austen (see HERE for more on Cassandra’s missing portrait) from Ozias Humphry, who had recently returned from an unsuccessful spell in India. That George Austen and his family stayed with Francis Austen at Sevenoaks in the summer of 1788 is documented in Austen family letters. Humphry’s customary terms for a portrait commission were half the fee in advance and half on completion. His 1788 accounts, now held at the British Library, list a bill on Francis Austen for 13 guineas as advance payment for work. In 1791 Humphry made a note of Francis Austen's death, possibly implying that there was money owed to him.

Uncle Francis Austen, the family patriarch died in 1791 and his wealth, land and possessions, which would have included the Rice Portrait, passed to Francis Motley Austen.

Francis Motley Austen (1747-1815)

Francis Motley Austen was the eldest son of Francis Austen by his wife Anne Motley who died in childbirth in 1747. His inheritance included houses in Sevenoaks, Wilmington, and Lamberhurst. In 1796 he foreclosed on Kippington Park, an estate adjoining the Duke of Dorset’s Knole House.

In 1796 he paid Ozias Humphry for pictures. A bill in his account books of Austen-Clarige shows the entry 'My bill on you, for pictures at Kippington, 30 pounds, 7 shillings ‘.

Francis Motley Austen and his wife Elizabeth Wilson had 11 children. The eldest son, Lucius, became mentally ill and pre-deceased his father and so Thomas Austen inherited his father’s property on the latter’s death in 1815.

COLONEL THOMAS AUSTEN (1775-1859)                                                      

Colonel Thomas Austen was Jane Austen's second cousin. In 1803 he married Margaretta Morland, the daughter of a wealthy slave trader and plantation owner. During Colonel Austen’s long absences Margaretta became very friendly with Jane Austen’s nieces, and Elizabeth Austen (who became Elizabeth Rice when she married), named one her sons, John Morland Rice, after Margaretta.

In a letter to her brother Frank (Francis Austen, dated 1813, Jane Austen wrote: ‘Our Cousins Col[onel] Tho[mas] Austen & Margaretta are going Aid-de-camps to Ireland & Lord Whitworth goes in their Train as Lord Lieutenant; good appointments for each.’

Colonel Thomas Austen returned from Ireland and moved into the family home at Kippington after his mother's death in 1817. He was a friend of Colonel Thomas Harding-Newman and his wife Elizabeth Hall, who lived at Nelmes, Hornchurch in Essex. Colonel Harding-Newman’s son, Rev Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman, later recorded that he could remember Thomas Austen visiting their house and that Thomas Austen had given the Rice Portrait to his step-mother, Elizabeth Hall. (See Primary Evidence Section).

Thomas Austen died in 1859.

ELIZABETH HALL (LATER ELIZABETH HARDING-NEWMAN) 1789-1831

Elizabeth Hall was born at Egham, Surrey, the daughter of Thomas Hall and married Colonel Thomas Harding-Newman at St Marylebone Church, Westminster in London on 29 December 1817. Colonel Austen took possession of the family home at Kippington in March 1817 and it is possible the Rice Portrait was a wedding present.

Rev Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman recorded that his step-mother, Elizabeth Hall, was a great admirer of Jane Austen. It is quite possible that his step-mother had met Austen - Elizabeth Hall’s aunt, Ann Humffries, was married to Sir Henry Hawley of Leybourne Grange, Kent for 40 years, from 1785 until Henry Hawley’s death in 1826. The Hawleys were friends of the Austen family and are mentioned in Austen’s letters. The Hawleys were also were very closely connected through marriage with another family very close to the Austen family - the Bridges of Goodnestone Park. Two of Henry Hawley’s daughters married into the Bridges family while one of the daughters of the Bridges family, Elizabeth, married Edward Austen (later Austen Knight). Leybourne Grange is around 30 miles from Jane's brother Edward Austen Knight's estate at Godmersham. Elizabeth Hall undoubtedly knew people who were close to Austen even if she had not met her personally. The Rice Portrait, while it temporarily left the Austen family, remained in the circle of those who had known Jane Austen personally. It is not credible therefore that the portrait was of some other member of the wider Austen family.

Elizabeth Hall died in 1831. Her husband Colonel Thomas Harding-Newman died in 1856 and the Rice Portrait was inherited by his eldest son, the Rev Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman, along with the rest of the family property including the Nelmes estate at Hornchurch.  

The Rev Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman 1811-1882

Rev Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman was an Oxford don and academic and lifelong bachelor. He was ordained priest in 1837 and became a Fellow of Magdalen College in 1846, resigning his Fellowship in 1873. Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman was in poor health for the last ten years of his life, causing his friend, Oxford historian John Rouse Bloxam, some concern when he did not write regularly. During these years he spent much of his time at his house at Great Clacton. In 1880, approaching seventy years of age, he began putting his affairs in order and in December of that year he wrote a letter to his friend Bloxam:

I should like to give another painting of Jane Austen, the novelist by Zoffany to her relative your neighbour Morland Rice. It is of a girl about 15, and came into my family the gift of Col. Austen of Chippington [sic] to my mother-in-law, or rather stepmother, my father’s second wife; who was a great admirer of the novelist. I can remember Col. Austen visiting this place.
Latterly when at Bramber I have failed to fall in with my old friend. I don’t think he can have forgotten me. I was at Oxford when he knocked his head against a post, and ascertained that the post was the harder of the two.

The Zoffany attribution was incorrect and unfortunate, though perhaps understandable. The artist was in fact Zoffany’s contemporary, Ozias Humphry. The two were friends and contemporaries and had spent some time in India together. (Both artists are represented in Zoffany’s seminal work Colonel Mordaunt’s Cock Match).

Ozias Humphry’s signature was on the top right hand corner of the Rice Portrait but a hundred years after it was painted Harding-Newman may well have mistaken the indistinct ‘Humphry’ for ‘Zoffany’.

Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman died on 21 April 1882, naming his nephew Benjamin Harding-Newman his chief beneficiary.

Benjamin Harding-Newman (1842-1917)

Benjamin Harding-Newman inherited the Rice Portrait from his uncle, Rev Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman as documented in a letter from John Rouse Bloxam to General Gibbes Rigaud dated Easter Monday (March 26), 1883. In it he said:

Talking of paintings Hardman [sic] Newman, nephew of Dr Newman has just sent me a full length portrait by Zoffany of Miss Austen, the novelist, to give to Rice, who is a connection of the Lady. - Rice is much pleased with it - I knew that Newman intended to leave it to Rice, but did not, - but his nephew to his great credit has given it.

Benjamin Harding Newman was born in Cork, Ireland in 1842, the son of Captain Benjamin Harding Newman and his wife Anna Lefroy Sadleir. His maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Lefroy, younger sister of Thomas Langlois Lefroy a relative of Jane Austen’s close friend Madam Lefroy. He inherited considerable land, estates and property from his uncle in 1882 but was later beset by financial problems and was declared bankrupt. He finished his life living in St Austen, Cornwall which was also the home of Frederick Lovering, the owner of the small sketch of Jane Austen which was later purchased by the National Portrait Gallery. (Note: it seems a very strange coincidence that two men who possessed portraits of Jane Austen - hardly a commonplace - happened to live in the same small Cornish town at the same time!)

Sir Ernest royds Rice (1840-1927)

Ernest Rice rose to the rank of Admiral in the Royal Navy and at one point was Governor of Malta. In 1910, he arranged for the Rice Portrait to be photographed by the eminent photographer Emery Walker. The glass plate negatives of the Emery Walker photographs are now held at the Heinz Archive of the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Ernest Rice hung the Rice Portrait over the fireplace at his home at Sibbertswold House near Dover. Unfortunately, one cold December night in 1920 when the household were asleep the house caught fire. The Rice Portrait was saved by being flung from the window, breaking the 18th century oak frame (visible in Emery Walker’s photographs of 10 years before). It was more fortunate than the chest of plate and family heirlooms which was left to burn. The house was destroyed in the fire as was the health of Ernest Rice’s wife, who died three years later. After the fire, it is thought that Sir Ernest may have had the picture cut down to fit the portrait into a smaller frame.

On the death of Sir Ernest Rice in 1927, his daughter Gwenlian, who was married to Lord Northbourne, inherited Jane's portrait.  

GWENLIAN RICE (lady northbourne) 1871-1952

Gwenlian Rice inherited the Rice Portrait on the death of her father in 1927. Not long after inheriting the portrait she gave it back to the main branch of the family, passing it to her cousin, Henry Edward Harcourt Rice with the stipulation that the portrait should not be hung over a fireplace ‘…as the smoke was spoiling her.’ Gwenlian entailed the painting when she gave it to her cousin, preventing its sale while he had a legitimate heir.

HENRY EDWARD HARCOURT RICE 1864 - 1943

Henry Edward Harcourt Rice was given the Rice Portrait in 1928. It was a short time after this that he was approached by the National Portrait Gallery who wanted to buy the Rice Portrait for their collection but Henry E C Rice did not wish to sell it and in any event was unable to do so because of the entail created by his cousin as a condition of passing it to him. This refusal to sell marked the start of over eighty years of opposition to the Rice Portrait by the National Portrait Gallery which continues to this day.  

EDWARD RICE 1899-1973

Edward Rice inherited the Rice Portrait on his father’s death in 1943. He hung the painting at Dane Court, the family home and took great pleasure in it. On his death in 1973 the portrait passed to his son, Henry Rice.

Henry Rice 1928-2010

It is because of Henry Rice’s steady conviction of the portrait’s authenticity and his determined efforts to establish that fact, in spite of the opposition of the National Portrait Gallery, that the painting is now known as the ‘Rice Portrait’. Henry carried out a vast amount of research into the painting and is responsible for producing much of the evidence detailed on this website. He was greatly assisted and supported in his efforts by art critic Angus Stewart and by Brian Stewart, the Director of the Falmouth Art Gallery, both stalwart supporters of the Rice Portrait. Brian Stewart and Mervyn Cutten were co-authors of ‘A Dictionary of English Portrait Painters’ in which they attributed both the Rice Portrait and the large oil painting of Edward Knight, Jane’s brother, now at Chawton House, to Ozias Humphry.

Henry gave his wife Anne the Rice Portrait by Deed of Gift in 1990. Henry Rice died in 2010 with his fight to prove the Rice Portrait still unresolved. The painting is still owned by his widow, Mrs Anne Rice.

Family Acceptance

When the Rice Portrait was returned to John Morland Rice in 1883 the painting was universally accepted within the Austen family. John Morland Rice’s mother, Elizabeth Rice, had known Jane Austen personally and must have known whether the painting was of her aunt. Elizabeth Rice’s sister Marianne Austen-Knight, who also had known Jane Austen personally, was alive and staying with the family at the time. No-one at the time raised any objection to it being Jane Austen. The following year, 1884, Jane Austen’s great-nephew used a photograph of the painting as a frontispiece for his Life and Letters of Jane Austen published in 1884. Edward Knatchbull-Hugesson was the grandson of Jane Austen’s brother, Edward Austen Knight. It was used again by Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh as a frontispiece for her book Personal Aspects of Jane Austen, completed in 1895. Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh was the granddaughter of Jane Austen’s brother, James Austen, stating ‘it is of my great Aunt Jane Austen’. Fanny Caroline Lefroy, another great-niece and grandaughter of James Austen, wrote a note confirming the portrait was of Jane Austen. John Morland Rice’s sister, Fanny, Countess of Winchilsea, painted a fine watercolour of the portrait some time between 1883 and 1886. The family were clearly delighted with it. While there were some questions raised about where and when it was painted, no-one doubted it was a portrait of Jane Austen.

The portrait was given back to the family when there were family members alive who had known Jane Austen personally. The provenance could hardly be stronger.

no mention of portrait before 1880

Objections have been raised that there is no known mention of the portrait before 1880. We observe firstly, that there is also no known mention of the sketch of Jane Austen owned by the National Portrait Gallery before 1869 but that does not appear to have presented a difficulty with authentication. Secondly, as is well known, the Austens destroyed most of their letters. We have no idea what the family may have discussed, all we do know is that it was not mentioned by Jane’s brother Henry in 1832 and it was not used by James Edward Austen-Leigh in his biography of Jane Austen, published in 1869, A Memoir of Jane Austen. But neither case is that surprising. In 1832 the picture had temporarily left the family and Henry in any event would probably not have thought a painting of a 12 year-old in any way appropriate. By 1869, there was serious competition between James Austen’s descendants and Edward Knight’s descendants as to who was custodian of Jane Austen’s memory. There was no co-operation from the Knight side of the family with the Memoir and Lord Brabourne, once he had published the letters held on their side of the family, sold them off as fast as he could. As Austen scholar Robert Chapman later wrote to Richard Austen-Leigh, ‘it is very disappointing about the letters. I wish they might have come back to the family and incensed at the vandalism of the late Lordship - scandalous old man!’

James Edward Austen-Leigh’s failure to ask John Morland Rice for permission to use the portrait for his Memoir was hardly surprising given the poor relationship and competition that existed between different factions of the family by the second half of the nineteenth century

Brian Sewell on the provenance of the Rice Portrait

In an article written in 2007 art critic and writer Brian Sewell who wrote for the London Evening Standard for many years wrote of the Rice Portrait:

The provenance…is impeccable. The portrait still belongs to a descendant of the Austen family, its first recorded owner, Jane’s cousin, Thomas Austen, born in the same year, 1775, who within two years of Jane’s death gave it to another relative, describing it as of “Jane, the novelist”. For it not to be of Jane implies both a deliberate deceit on his part and the total gullibility of all the many members of the wider family who knew her. The authenticity of any painting by Botticelli, for example, with such an unbroken provenance, would be the more highly-prized for it and accepted without question.

You can read the article in full HERE

Professor Claudia Johnson on the provenance of the Rice Portrait

Professor Claudia Johnson, Professor of English at Princeton University and a steadfast supporter of the Rice Portrait, pointed out the absurdity of claiming the portrait is NOT Jane Austen.

If one were to contend that the portrait is not Jane Austen, one is dealing with the following scenario.

That Colonel Thomas Austen, who knew Jane Austen personally and was a member of her family, gave the portrait as Jane Austen, but knowing that it was not, while innumerable people who personally knew Jane Austen were still alive, to a person who either knew Jane Austen personally or greatly admired the novelist, who accepted it as being of Jane Austen (even though it was not) and who was married to Thomas Harding-Newman who knew Jane Austen personally and may have proposed to her and who presumably accepted it as Jane Austen (even though he knew it was not); all this at a time when innumerable people who knew Jane Austen personally were still alive.  

That she (Elizabeth Hall) gave it to her stepson The Rev. Dr Thomas Harding-Newman, a don at Magdalen College Oxford, who knew many people who had known Jane Austen personally and accepted it as being of Jane Austen (even though it was not) and that he gave it, via another don, to a member of Jane Austen’s family.

That in 1884 the historian of the family whose mother had lived in the same house as Jane Austen for ten years (and had only died twelve years before 1884) had INDEPENDENTLY CORROBORATED the identity of the sitter as Jane Austen, but she must have been mistaken. (“She knew before of the painting in your possession”)