JASNA covers the Rice portrait controversy
Considering the AP article about the Christie’s auction of the so-called “Rice portrait” contains some of what is called “mushy language” at the Editrix’s travail du journée, we are delighted to see that JASNA has published more extensive information about the portrait on their Web site.
Elsa Solender, past JASNA president, has written a short overview of the situation with more information about the auction: it will take place on April 19, 2007 at 2 p.m. 10 a.m. (please note change in time), and there will be free viewings of the portrait at Christie’s Rockefeller Center galleries on April 15-18 (see the article for details on time). The auction itself also is open to the public.
JASNA also has uploaded a PDF of the article from the Summer 2004 issue of JASNA News about the portrait, which we referenced in our previous post on the portrait. (The Editrix wrote a long essay about the article on her personal blog.) The article contains more extensive information about the claims of the painting as a portrait of Jane Austen.
There also is a link to the Christie’s listing, which has extensive information about the provenance of the painting and how it passed through the Austen and Rice families to the present owner as well as information about the various details that Christie’s took into account in deciding upon the painting’s authenticity.
March 30th, 2007 at 10:11 pm
I am going to do my best to see this portrait. It might be Jane, it might not be Jane, but as long as it’s a few blocks from my office, I might as well go visit it.
March 31st, 2007 at 12:11 am
I don’t blame you.
March 31st, 2007 at 8:59 am
Very good point about the value of seeing the portrait “in person” as opposed to in reproduction. For many years, most of us have only seen the portrait in very inferior and degraded monochrome. (For instance, as a frontispiece in some of the early C20 books.) I read something yesterday, from one of the costume experts, who said that examining the actual portrait one can see all sorts of costume detail. In her case, this new detail was enough to convince her that the portrait was from the late 1780s.
The Christie’s listing is very interesting. It contains some facts that are new to me.
Here’s one. It has been generally agreed that for there to have been a portrait of Jane, there must have been one of Cassandra too. The one of Cassandra is not known in modern times; it could be missing, lost, destroyed, or just hanging on someone’s wall, unidentified.
The Christie’s listing mentioned that Lord Brabourne possessed the Cassandra portrait at the time his cousin Mr. Morland-Rice was given the (presumed)Jane portrait. Now, Brabourne (the grandson of JA’s brother Edward) was born in 1829 so had never seen his Aunt Jane. But his first memories of his Aunt Cassandra would have been of a woman in her early sixties. Cassandra died when Brabourne was 15 yrs old.
Now, I spend a lot of time looking through old family photos. If I look at a photo of my great aunt taken when she was a 14 year old girl, can I positively say it is the same person I first met when she was in her sixties? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.
But, Brabourne was sure he had a portrait of his Aunt Cassandra in his possesion. This surely tends to substantiate the claims of the companion portrait to be of his Aunt Jane. What of Brabourne’s mother, Fanny Knight (Lady Knatchbull?) She died in 1882 so didn’t see the supposed portrait of Jane. She’d suffered from dementia for many years and we don’t know if she had seen her son’s portrait of Cass. She obviouly could have identified both Jane and Cassandra as she was born in 1793.