Is This Jane Austen?

[poliphilo]

This is the Rice portrait of the teenage Jane Austen which is being sold at Christie's today. 

Is it authentic ? 

Hmmmmmm. 

It's supported by oral tradition but...

...Some people think the frock is all wrong for the 1780s.

Short of going back in a Tardis we're never going to know.

But it's pretty, isn't it?

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

It is pretty...

npr mentioned this on their broadcast this morning.

Why do we have to know what she looked like, when her books speak volumes about her?

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

I've often thought that Ms. Austen was probably like the little brown wren - or the wise old owl who sat in the oak (the more she heard the less she spoke). I don't understand why people need someone intelligent to also be beautiful.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

It looks like one of those paintings where they put a head on a pre-painted body. They are disproportionate, kind of like an ukiyoe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukiyoe).

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

The dress seems rather too empire for a teenage Jane Austen in my humble opinion, Though I suppose this might be accounted for by my rather schetchy knowledge of fashion in the late 18th Century...

But again; who cares? I always imagine Jane Austen looking rather like Emma Thompson, and that image is really quite, quite satisfactory to me.

[idahoswede.livejournal.com]

Dress is definitely later period, and were her family wealthy enough for a full-length portrait? I know she had good connections, but don't know about the finances.

[shullie.livejournal.com]

I love the portrayal of her in the recent film 'Becoming Jane',

http://www.bvimovies.com/uk/becoming_jane/

though now when I read her, I see her in the image of the actress Anne Hatherway :)

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I don't think I've seen adult fashions that look like that dating earlier than the mid 1790s, and in general, children's fashions are likely to have looked like smaller versions of adult fashions. So, on the whole, to me it seems highly unlikely that it's Jane Austen unless it's Jane Austen in 1795 or later.

[oakmouse]

Sadly, it doesn't pass muster with my inner art historian. (Although I don't work in the field, that's what my BFA is in, and I know a decent bit about clothing from that era.) The dress is decidedly not 1780s. We do in fact know something about clothing worn by girls during that period (we have a number of surviving portraits, for one thing), and a gown comparable to those worn by adults a decade later isn't really in the running unless Jane herself had a Tardis and could hop ahead for a look at what she'd be wearing to the local Assemblies once she was "out". ;)

The disproportion of head and body, BTW, isn't uncommon for portraiture of that period. It's usually seen in portraits done by the class of painter who travelled around the countryside painting the wives and children of local gentry (as opposed to the luminaries who had regular studios), and you find it in both Britain and America. Sometimes it comes from the head being added to a prepainted body, but when as here it's accompanied by other distortions of form (notice how short her upper torso appears to be) it's more likely to be the result of the painter's lack of skill or practice at portraying human anatomy.

Myself, I'd want to see the provenance of the picture itself. Oral tradition is notoriously iffy, and we already have some discredited tales from that source relating to Jane. ("The prettiest, silliest, most affected husband-hunting butterfly", for instance.)

It's a sweet face, though, and altogether a rather endearing picture. I can understand wanting it to be Jane!

[amberb-uk.livejournal.com]

We already have a picture of Austen, done by her sister Cassandra. It's pretty but doesn't show her face and it's definitely a family sketch rather than a great work of art kinda thing...

There are things about the gown and what we know of Austen's taste in clothing (see below) that just feel *wrong* about this, especially if it were supposedly completed around 1780. But there's a certain amount that could be down to the artist - things like the sleeve edge bands being too wide and the sleeves sitting too low on the arm. It would take me ages to explain more, so I won't bore anyone. Brief answer is this doesn't add up as a portrait completed around 1780.

We also know that the adult Austen liked to use colour and pattern in her clothing (because of clothing of hers in costume museum collections and her letters to family about things she was going to wear for particular events) so there is something odd about her being dressed in plain white, even for a formal portrait.

Perhaps there was a portrait commissioned and this is her likeness, but perhaps there was some 'retouching' done later for the sake of a fashionable appearance? That might explain those awful sleeves...

[burgi.livejournal.com]

nice victorian parasole (we have two originals in the garage) nice pic put not Jane (or is she in league with the Doctor).