Talk about your anticlimaxes. Bidding on the “Rice Portrait” did not meet the owner’s specified minimum price and failed to sell. jasna.org has information about the bid amounts.

After lackluster bidding for two and a fraction minutes by two in-room bidders–which started at $280,000 and reached $350,000–the portrait was withdrawn, clearly having failed to meet its reserve price. Christie’s had estimated the sale at $400,000 to $800,000.

Before the sale, Alert Janeite Lisa let us know that the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” had a short piece by Angus Stewart, British president of the International Association of Art Critics, who is convinced that the portrait is one of Jane Austen.

The Rice Portrait shows us what we sense, that young Jane Austen had a turbulent spirit. Her juvenilia, including the History of England, are evidence of an intelligent adventurer who was to shrug off any harness. And the portrait shows nothing of the prim and the proper, but much that conveys the immediate hunger of a girl smouldering for life.

We look at the sweet young lady in the portrait and get none of that, really. But to each his own. We also like the comment from “LawrenceUS” in response to the piece:

There are no references to the painting in any letters or documents from around 1790, when the painting supposedly was done. There are no references to it in any letters or documents in the years leading to 1831, during which period second cousin Col. Thomas Austen supposedly gave the painting away. There are no records or mentions until the 1880s, when someone says, Oh! I have a painting of Jane Austen that Col. Austen gave my stepmother!

Precisely.

NPR also had a piece this morning (which we somehow missed–hangover from Downy high, we suppose) in which Clive James and the reporter said, among other things, that many considered the girl in the portrait “too pretty” to be Jane Austen; after all, if Jane Austen had been pretty, she would have gotten married! Which is crazy, considering Jane pretty much actively chose to not marry. Mr. James said “I think the sensible consensus is that it isn’t her, but is a nice picture.” We agree. It’s a lovely portrait.

Alert Janeite Lisa found a page for the film Sense and Sensibilidad at the producer’s Web site with a synopsis of the plot.

Sense & Sensibilidad is a latina version of Jane Austen′s classic novel set in modern-day Los Angeles. It is the tale of two sisters: Mary, a young beauty who chooses passion over logic and Nora, a law student whose fixed moral compass keeps her from following her desires. They are uprooted, along with their mother, from their luxurious lifestyle in San Marino when their father suddenly passes away. Out of money and out of options, the women move into their great aunt Aurelia′s modest, but lively home in the Latino-centric Boyle Heights neighborhood. The women find themselves thrown into a world that, despite their heritage, seems completely foreign. However, over time, they uncover the joy, laughter and beauty of the culture they once fought so desperately to hide. In the process they find the one thing that eluded them: love.

Hey, wait a minute! Where’s the burgeoning sexual and romantic discovery? We thought S&S was about burgeoning sexual and romantic discovery. The BBC says so, so it must be true.

Note the cast is TBA. Can we get some love for the gorgeous and talented America Ferrera as Nora? Pleeeeeeeaaaaaase? There’s a nest of Ugly Betty fans here at AustenBlog/Molland’s ready to represent for our girl!

Sylvia L. shared a funny story with us via e-mail…she had found a lovely volume of three of Jane Austen’s novels: S&S, Emma, and NA. The book was Volume 2 of The Illustrated Works of Jane Austen, but she was unable to find Volume 1, presumably containing the other three novels, on amazon.de. She wrote to the publisher and asked for the ISBN, and discovered why she had been unable to find the book using the normal search fields. (Pay close attention to the title and the author’s name.)

Congratulations to LauraGrace, who knew that the phrase “a neighbourhood of voluntary spies” is from Jane Austen’s novel Northanger Abbey.

“If I understand you rightly, you had formed a surmise of such horror as I have hardly words to — Dear Miss Morland, consider the dreadful nature of the suspicions you have entertained. What have you been judging from? Remember the country and the age in which we live. Remember that we are English, that we are Christians. Consult your own understanding, your own sense of the probable, your own observation of what is passing around you. — Does our education prepare us for such atrocities? Do our laws connive at them? Could they be perpetrated without being known, in a country like this, where social and literary intercourse is on such a footing, where every man is surrounded by a neighbourhood of voluntary spies, and where roads and newspapers lay everything open? Dearest Miss Morland, what ideas have you been admitting?”

LauraGrace’s name was drawn to win a copy of The Wicked Wit of Jane Austen, compiled by Dominique Enright. Congratulations to LauraGrace and many thanks to all who entered the contest.