The Rice portrait and the Northcote farce

In April 2017 an article was published in the Financial Times which ostensibly claimed that a £400 portrait purchased by science journalist Anjana Ahuja at a provincial auction disproved the claim of the Rice Portrait to be Jane Austen. My mother, Mrs Anne Rice, was given less than 24 hours to comment before the article was submitted for publication, and after the article was published, she was denied a right to reply by the Financial Times. The article was designed to discredit the Rice Portrait and unsurprisingly, has caused some followers of the story to doubt the claim of the Rice Portrait to be Austen.

Researcher Ellie Bennett has been examining the claims of the article and has discovered that many of the claims made in the article do not stack up. Moreover, since the article was published Ms Ahuja has consistently refused to allow sight of the painting which she claims to be by James Northcote. The National Portrait Gallery have also refused to supply high resolution photographs of the Legg stamp on the back of the Northcote portrait which allegedly is identical to a stamp on the back of the Rice Portrait.

Until the Northcote portrait is produced and verified, I do not believe that any weight whatsoever should be placed on this painting as disproving the Rice Portrait, and indeed, the refusal to produce it leads me to the inevitable conclusion that this painting is not as claimed. I believe that Anjana Ahuja and Jacob Simon conspired to present the Northcote painting as proof against the Rice Portrait when it is in fact nothing of the kind.

More and more evidence is coming to light in support of the Rice Portrait. That the National Portrait Gallery should continue to rely on this extremely suspicious 'evidence' from Anjana Ahuja in the face of all the facts raises serious questions about the National Portrait Gallery's impartiality with regard to the Rice Portrait. As is well known, the National Portrait Gallery tried to purchase the Rice Portrait in the 1930s and were refused - it is my belief that all subsequent opposition to this painting of Jane Austen stems from this rejection.

Johnnie Nettlefold

May 2019

NOTE: You can read more about the National Portrait Gallery’s dealings with the Rice Portrait in the National Portrait Gallery Section and more about the disputed Northcote painting of ‘Mrs Smith’ in the Canvas Stamps Section