Is this really a portrait of Jane Austen?

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Mystery woman: if Ozias Humphry's portrait (circa 1790) does prove to be Jane Austen at the age of 14, it will be the only painting of the novelist we have

Rare sight: Jane Austen as sketched by her sister Cassandra

Austin's brother Edward painted by an unknown artist (circa 1786-1788)

Raised profile: a silhouette, probably of Austen, by an unknown artist (circa 1810-1815)

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• Brian Sewell archive
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When Henry Rice was growing up, a portrait of a young girl hung over the mantelpiece in the family home. It was, he was told, his illustrious forebear, for Rice is reportedly the sixth generation descendant of the novelist Jane Austen's brother Edward. He had no reason to doubt it then and continues to believe it now. But while his own faith remains undiminished, the market has apparently decided otherwise.

Amid swirling claim and counterclaim, when the so-called Rice portrait was put up for auction at Christie's in New York last month, it failed to sell. Despite enormous interest, it was almost as if the comparatively modest estimate of $400,000 to $800,000 (£200,000 to £400,000) confirmed the doubts that have besieged the work for decades.

For the painting has long been one of the most controversial in literary portraiture. The National Portrait Gallery in London, which would be its natural home if it proved to be Jane, says it has spent more time on the work in the past 15 years than on any other in a private collection. Its experts roundly reject it as a representation of Austen. Their decision leaves a poor sketch produced by Jane Austen's sister Cassandra as the gallery's only contemporary likeness of the Pride and Prejudice author.

But there are other voices who, in the wake of the failed auction, believe that the time has come for a scholarly assessment of the evidence. Many of the painting's most vehement critics have never even seen the work up close - or at all. And Jane Austen is, after all, one of Britain's most popular literary treasures.

Brian Sewell, the Evening Standard's art critic, says: "We need to stop the constant sniping. Let's put it in the National Portrait Gallery and organise a sober debate."

The history that was commonly accepted for years suggested that the portrait was painted in around 1788-89 when Jane was not yet 14. It is believed to have been commissioned from the artist Ozias Humphry by her great-uncle, Francis Austen, a wealthy lawyer. Jane's brother Edward, who had just returned from the Grand Tour of Europe, and her sister, Cassandra, were also painted. For the girls, the pictures may have been an attempt to promote good marriages.

Wedding bells failed to ring. And for whatever reason, the painting of Jane fell to the ownership of Colonel Thomas Austen of Sevenoaks, Francis Austen's grandson and Jane's cousin and contemporary. Shortly after Jane's death in 1817 at the age of 41, the portrait of "Jane the novelist" was passed on to a distant relative, Mrs Elizabeth Harding-Newman, who had expressed her admiration for her kin's novels.

As Christie's wrote in its catalogue for the recent sale, it certainly makes the image the earliest one of the artist. "This provenance and the fact that it was considered a portrait of her by members of her own family, as far back as the year of her death, gives enormous credibility to the identification of the sitter in the Rice Portrait as Jane Austen," its experts noted.

The work continued to be handed from one member of the large Austen clan to the next and came to prominence in 1884, nearly 70 years after the author's death, when it was used as the frontispiece to the first published collection of her letters. Only now is it set to leave family ownership for the first time in its history - if Henry Rice can find a buyer.

His decision to sell has polarised debate but did not start the argument. The first major doubts as to the portrait's authenticity were cast as far back as 1948 when Dr RW Chapman, an Austen scholar, said that, on the basis of costume evidence, it could not be her.

Subsequent historians, notably Aileen Ribeiro of the Courtauld Institute and Deirdre Le Faye, a leading Austen authority, have also asserted that the high waistline, short full sleeves and long skirt the sitter is wearing were not in existence until the beginning of the 19th century - when Austen would have been well out of her teens. Le Fay has suggested the portrait is another member of their vast extended family, one Mary Ann Campion, a niece by Thomas Austen.

But Brian Sewell is wary of costume evidence. "Costume historians must produce the other paintings that prove the date of the girl's dress. So far they have not done this," he says.

Henry Rice is further exasperated that many of those commenting on the work have not even seen it - or if they have, in less than ideal circumstances. It was last seen publicly in London, at an exhibition at Olympia in 1994 organised by Angus Stewart, president of the British section of the International Association of Art Critics.

Jacob Simon, chief curator of the National Portrait Gallery, saw it there. He insists that the current claims for the painting are not tenable although any new evidence would be genuinely welcome.

"I see hundreds, thousands of portraits a year. This seems to me to have a tenuous provenance that takes the picture back to another branch of the Austen family. It goes out of the Austen family altogether for 65 years after Jane Austen's death," he says.

Simon also argues that Henry Austen, Jane's brother and literary executor, did not provide the portrait for the 1832 edition of the novels.

And Simon's trump card is "dry and dusty art history" evidence about a canvas stamp on the rear of the painting which suggests the man who supplied the canvas was "Wm Legg, High Holborn, London".

Previous research by Simon showed that Legg worked in High Holborn from 1802 to 1806, at least a decade after Rice claims that the portrait was painted. Simon is convinced this leaves the early 19th century as the earliest possible date for the painting.

He does not even believe the painting is by Humphry, arguing the style is wrong.

Yet Claudia L Johnson, an English literature professor at Princeton University in the States, points out that as recently as 1985 the National Portrait Gallery was attributing the work to Humphry in its catalogue of Regency portraits. The attribution is crucial because Ozias Humphry was too blind to paint after 1797.

Johnson sees the family evidence as impressive, not tenuous. "What emerges from the historical record is that various branches of the Austen family concur that there was a portrait taken of Jane Austen in the early part of her life," she says from America.

"On the basis of its one-time ownership of Thomas Austen (who knew Jane during her lifetime), the knowledge and interest of the Harding-Newmans (who also knew Jane), the latest testimony of collateral descendants to the existence of a portrait of the young Jane Austen, Lord Brabourne concluded that the portrait was authentic and used it as a frontispiece for his 1884 edition of Austen's letters. It is hardly an upstart image, then."

Henry Rice, now 78 and living in Dorset, wearily offers counterclaimto every criticism. That the portrait is mentioned in no surviving diary or letter of the author signifies nothing, he says. There is no mention of the portrait of Jane's brother, Edward, either. But that exists and can be seen at the Jane Austen Museum in Chawton, Hampshire.

Rice had clung on to the portrait as an heirloom long after the rest of the family's farm had been sold off.

The latest debate over the painting has proved a strain and he suffered a heart attack this week. But he seems resolutely upbeat about his setback at auction. "In a sense, the failure to sell in New York could turn out to be a blessing," he says. "It certainly didn't seem so at the time but when one thinks about it, the portrait belongs to this country and it should be seen in this country."

He remains baff led by the "extraordinary antagonism from people who have not actually seen it". But what he would like now is for the work to be placed in a gallery or museum for the public to be able to view it.

"The fashion for Jane Austen is enormously strong," he says. "People would like to see what I believe - and quite a few others believe - is the only proper image of her."

 

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