The provenance of the Rice Portrait

The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen

In recent years there has been a great deal of new evidence produced which supports the claim of the Rice Portrait to be of Jane Austen. (See the official website HERE)

However debate about this picture has gone on for so long that many of the facts have become mired in confusion as well as in deliberate obfuscation and mis-information.

It is therefore worth reiterating the known provenance for the Rice Portrait as a reminder of just how strong it is:

Documentary evidence for the provenance of the portrait exists in the form of a letter held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford dated 30 December 1880 from the then owner of the picture, Revd Dr Thomas Harding-Newman, to Oxford historian John Rouse Bloxam.

Revd Dr Harding-Newman wrote that the portrait had been given to his step-mother, Elizabeth Harding-Newman née Hall, by Colonel Thomas Austen because Elizabeth Hall was a great admirer of Jane Austen. He stated that Colonel Austen was a friend of Elizabeth Hall and that he could remember Colonel Austen visiting their house when he was young.

I should like to give another painting of Jane Austen, the novelist by Zoffany to her relative your neighbour Morland Rice. It is of a girl about 15, and came into my family the gift of Col. Austen of Chippington to my mother-in-law, or rather stepmother, my father’s second wife; who was a great admirer of the novelist. I can remember Col. Austen visiting this place. Latterly when at Bramber I have failed to fall in with my old friend. I don’t think he can have forgotten me. I was at Oxford when he knocked his head against a post, and ascertained that the post was the harder of the two.

Colonel Thomas Austen was Jane Austen's second cousin. He was the grandson of Jane Austen's great-uncle Francis Austen who is known to have financially supported Jane Austen's father, George Austen. Francis Austen was a wealthy landowner and attorney and on his death in 1791at the age of 94, his estates and wealth were inherited by his son Francis Motley Austen and on the latter's death, by his own eldest surviving son, Colonel Thomas Austen.

According to Jane Austen's great-niece Fanny Caroline Lefroy, who was the family historian, the Rice Portrait was painted in 1789, and it is likely that it was commissioned by great-uncle Francis Austen. Jane Austen is known to have visited Francis Austen in the summer of 1788 for a family celebration with her family.

Elizabeth Hall was the daughter of Thomas Hall of Egham, Surrey and Cumberland Street, London. (Cumberland Street was also town residence of Sir Thomas Philip Hampson, relative of the Austens and financial backer of Jane Austen's brother Henry Austen.)

Elizabeth Hall's aunt, Ann Hawley née Humffreys, was married for 40 years to Sir Henry Hawley of Leybourne Grange and Harley Street, London. The Hawleys are known to have been friends of the Austens and are mentioned in Jane Austen's letters. Two of the Hawley daughters married into the Bridges family of Goodnestone Park, also very close friends of the Austens.

Further documentary evidence for the portrait is provided in a letter from John Rouse Bloxam dated Easter Monday 1883 to General Gibbes Rigaud, also held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

Bloxam wrote that Benjamin Harding-Newman had sent him the portrait to pass on to John Morland Rice, a relative of Austen (he was the grandson of Jane Austen's brother Edward Austen)

Benjamin Harding-Newman was the nephew and beneficiary of Revd Dr Thomas Harding-Newman and was carrying out the expressed wishes of the latter that the portrait be given to Morland Rice.

The portrait has remained in the ownership of the Rice family ever since and is now owned by the widow of Henry Rice.

Revd Dr Thomas Harding-Newman mistakenly attributed the portrait to Johan Zoffany. It is now known that the artist was Ozias Humphry, whose brother, William Humphry, was vicar of Kemsing and Seal, Kent and a friend and neighbour of Jane Austen's relatives the Walters. (William Hampson Walter was the step-brother of Jane Austen's father, George Austen.) Ozias Humphry's patron was the Duke of Dorset, whose agent was Francis Austen; Ozias Humphry had painted Francis Austen's own portrait in 1780:

Francis Austen by Ozias Humphry

Held at Graves Gallery, Sheffield

To claim that the provenance of the Rice Portrait is complicated is ridiculous - it is perfectly straightforward. 

If this were any other picture - or if the National Portrait Gallery had been successful in buying the picture in the 1930s as they tried to do - it would have been accepted years ago.

A Literary Portrait Re-Examined. Jane Austen and Mary Anne Campion. Part One

In 1996 Deirdre Le Faye published an article, A Literary Portrait Re-Examined. Jane Austen and Mary Anne Campion, in the journal The Book Collector. (I have been unable to locate a copy of the article online; if you would like to read it in full then please email me.) In this article she advanced her own theory  - that the portrait is of a distant relative of Austen's called Mary Anne Campion, an opinion she has maintained ever since.

Le Faye opens with an outline of the early search for a portrait of Jane Austen, the facts of which are now well rehearsed. She does not take issue with the provenance of the portrait as belonging to the Motley Austen family of Kippington - descendants of Jane Austen's great-uncle Francis Austen and passing into the ownership of Colonel Thomas Austen who unexpectedly inherited his father's considerable wealth after the death of his elder brother. At some point between 1817 and 1831 Colonel Austen gave the portrait to Eliza Hall. It descended to her step-son Dr. Thomas Harding-Newman on the death of his father in 1856 before returning to the Austen family in 1883 when it was passed to the grandson of Jane Austen's brother Edward Austen Knight. The recipient, Reverend John Morland Rice, was an old friend of Dr Harding Newman, and it has remained within the Rice family ever since.

Jane Austen's Great-Uncle Francis Austen
Commissioned by the Duke of Dorset
Painted by Ozias Humphry
1780 

We now come to the point where, having received the portrait, John Morland Rice began to make enquiries about it. According to Le Faye, Morland Rice "evidently wished to date it more precisely" and he first asked Henry Morland Austen, a nephew of Colonel Thomas Austen, about the portrait but "he had no additional knowledge."

Rev. John Morland Rice

Deirdre Le Faye has a tendency to combine documented facts with her own theories and conjectures and it is not always obvious which is which. In fact the only evidence we have of Morland Rice's research into his portrait is in the form of two extant letters - the first from Fanny Caroline Lefroy to Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh in 1883 and the second, a year later, from Henry Morland Austen to John Morland Rice.

The first letter was written on 23 October 1883. Fanny Caroline Lefroy was the daughter of Jane Austen's niece, Anna Lefroy. By 1883 Anna Lefroy and her siblings James Edward Austen-Leigh and Caroline Austen - the three children of James Austen - were all dead. In 1883 Fanny Lefroy was living in Reading and she had apparently received a letter from her cousin Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh about the portrait. Her reply is held in the Austen family archive in Hampshire Record Office.

This letter was unreported before Deirdre Le Faye published it in her article. It was an important find and a key document in the history of this portrait, which makes what follows quite extraordinary.

Le Faye transcribed a portion of the letter for her article and published it as follows:

I never heard before of the portrait of Jane Austen. I feel sure it never was either at Steventon or Chawton. My Mother & Aunt Caroline would certainly have recollected it had they ever seen it. In 1787 the year it was painted she was a school girl in the Abbey School here. Possibly she might have been to Godmersham to stay with her Cousins & companionise her brother Edward & possibly Mr and Mrs Knight had it done. I suppose Mr Morland Rice can throw some light on the matter, or is it a picture he has picked up of a Jane Austen painted by Romney but not the Jane. Mr Morland Austen picked one up & fondly believed it was her, but it was painted at Malta where she never was. I will write & ask Cassie if she knows anything of it. I am sure her father & mother never had any money to spend on portraits of their children. If it is genuine would not Mr M.R. generously allow it to be photographed? I should greatly like to see it.' (Austen-Leigh archive).

Le Faye then comments that "It will be noted that Mr Morland Rice was now stating a firm date of 1787 (which would make Jane 12 rather than 15) and Romney as the artist rather than Zoffany, instead of accepting Dr Harding Newman's traditions; and it is also evident that Miss Lefroy was highly sceptical of the picture's authenticity."

Firstly, it is not clear to me why Deirdre Le Faye writes that Mr Morland Rice was "now stating a firm date of 1787". It is Fanny Lefroy who is stating the date not Morland Rice. If Le Faye is suggesting that the date came from Morland Rice, she does not produce any evidence.

Secondly, and more importantly, Fanny Lefroy was not stating a firm date of 1787. For, despite all her experience in transcribing letters and documenting the history of the Austen family, Deirdre Le Faye has given an incorrect date. Fanny Lefroy did not write 1787. She wrote 1789.

You can see this for yourself in an image of Fanny's original letter here:

How did Deirdre Le Faye manage to make such a mistake over something as important as the dating of the picture? I'm now forced to wonder whether there are other mistakes in her research. How much of it has been checked?

So, in October 1883, Fanny Caroline Lefroy wrote to Mary Austen-Leigh stating that the picture was painted in 1789 and that at that time Jane Austen was at the Abbey School in Reading.

The date is significant for another reason. Morland Rice had been advised that the portrait was painted by Johan Zoffany. But by the time Deirdre Le Faye was writing her article in 1996, Zoffany had been discounted and the artist most frequently connected to the portrait was Ozias Humphry. If the portrait really had been painted in 1787 as Le Faye transcribed, then it could not have been painted by either Zoffany or Humphry for in that year both men were in India trying to paint their way to fortune  -  Zoffany with considerably more success than Humphry. Ozias Humphry returned to England in the summer of 1788 and by the autumn of that year he was visiting his brother William Humphry, vicar at Seal near Sevenoaks, where he spent a great deal of his time.

Colonel Mordaunt's Cock Match
Commissioned by William Hastings
Painted by Zoffany
1788

Detail from the same painting showing
Ozias Humphry standing
with his hand on Zoffany's shoulder.
The painting records a visit to Lucknow in 1784

Le Faye claims that "Miss Lefroy was highly sceptical of the picture's authenticity." But there is no evidence that she was sceptical in her letter, nor does she seem to be ruling it out. "If it is genuine, would not Mr M.R generously allow it to be photographed?" she says. She does not appear to have any previous knowledge of the portrait, and she was correct of course that it was never at Steventon or Chawton. She also notes that Jane's parents would not have gone to such expense. Her suggestion is that it was painted in Kent which was, of course, where the money in the family resided.

"People get so horridly poor & economical in this part of the World, that I have no patience with them. - Kent is the only place for happiness."
Jane Austen, 1798.

Fanny suggests Edward Austen's adoptive parents the Knights might have commissioned the portrait. It was a reasonable supposition and might also explain her reference to George Romney, a great friend of Ozias Humphry, who painted portraits of Thomas and Catherine Knight in the early 1780s.

Catherine Knight by George Romney

Thomas Knight by George Romney

Deirdre Le Faye writes that the next step was that "Mr Morland Austen visited her [Fanny Lefroy] on 8th September 1884  - presumably equipped with a photograph - and prompted her to suggest a date of 1788-89, and that the picture might possibly have been painted in Bath if Jane had ever stayed there with her uncle and aunt Mr and Mrs Leigh-Perrot at that time."

Once more we are dealing with speculation on the part of Deirdre Le Faye. There is no evidence that Henry Morland Austen was equipped with a photograph. Nor is there any evidence that he "prompted" Fanny to suggest a date of 1788-89. We now know that Fanny Lefroy was consistently  quoting the same date as she had done the previous year. There is no reason to suppose she was prompted. Indeed, the previous year she had been very definite that the portrait was painted in 1789, a fact that was obscured by the mis-quoting of the date by Deirdre Le Faye.

Le Faye is making her assumptions based on the letter which Henry Morland Austen wrote to John Morland Rice on 09 September 1884. She does not transcribe this particular letter in her article. The relevant section reads:

My Dear Rice, 

I thank you very much for your interesting letter, which puts the matter in a very different light. I saw Miss Lefroy yesterday. She knows more than anybody about the family history. She knew before of the portrait in your possession. Except for one or two difficulties, she would have no doubts about its genuineness.

 1.Jane A was born Dec. 1775. The date on your picture is (she thinks) 1788 or 9, making her not 14.
 2.Her parents did not go to Bath till they left Steventon in 1801.
 3.Jane and Cassandra were at school at Reading at that period.

But on the other hand her Uncle and Aunt Leigh Perrot often visited Bath and she may have been with them, also "Northanger Abbey" was written long before 1801 and the local colouring is such as to show that she must have been there before she wrote it.

It is easy to see why Deirdre Le Faye avoided quoting the letter; it undermines her argument that Fanny Lefroy was sceptical about the portrait. Indeed, according to Henry Morland Austen, "except for one or two difficulties she would have no doubts about its genuineness".

It is frustrating that we don't know what it was that "put the matter in a very different light". However as we don't have Morland Rice's letter, we have to try and make sense of the reply without it.

Morland Rice has been given a portrait which he has been told is of Jane Austen and painted by Zoffany. The portrait had been passed on to him by John Rouse Bloxam who was historian of Magdalen College and an art expert and antiquarian. He was also the nephew of the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence, President of the Royal Academy for ten years. Bloxam would almost certainly have known that Zoffany had been in India from 1783 until 1790. After all, Zoffany was very successful and painted some of his most famous works whilst he was there. Morland Rice would therefore also know that if the painting was by Zoffany then it cannot have been painted prior to 1790.

Morland Rice's attempts to clarify the Zoffany attribution might explain Fanny's "one or two difficulties" with the painting.

1. Perhaps Morland Rice wants to know if the portrait could have been painted in 1790/91. But Fanny Lefroy says that the date on the portrait was 1788 or 1789 making Jane not fourteen.

2. Then there is the question of where it could have been painted. In Bath perhaps? Zoffany was known to have visited there after he returned from India in 1790. But Fanny Lefroy says her parents did not go to Bath until 1801.

3. Perhaps the third question was whether she could have been in Bath earlier? No, says Fanny, Jane and Cassandra were in school at Reading during that time. But on the other hand, Jane must have visited Bath before they moved there in order to write the descriptions in "Northanger Abbey".

This letter makes sense if Morland Rice was trying to work out when and where Jane Austen may have had her portrait painted by Zoffany.

Deirdre Le Faye says "it does not seem that Fanny Caroline Lefroy made any attempt to find proof for these suggestions, between this conversation in September 1884 and her death in January 1885." The surviving letters we have are far too few to know one way or another whether Fanny Lefroy made any further enquiries of her own but as she was dead less than four months later, if she did not it would hardly be surprising.

John Morland Rice seems to have accepted that the portrait was by Zoffany despite the difficulties with the dating. In 1884 the portrait was used as a frontispiece for the first edition of the Letters of Jane Austen by Edward Knatchbull-Hugessen (Lord Brabourne) who was the son of Jane Austen's niece, Fanny Austen Knight. It was used again by William Austen-Leigh, the son of Jane's nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh and the former's nephew Richard Austen-Leigh as a frontispiece for their Jane Austen: Her Life and Letters, A Family Record published in 1913. In the text they deal with the question of the dating of the portrait:

"Our Jane became fifteen on December 16, 1790, and Zoffany returned from India in that year. Jane is believed to have visited her uncle, Dr Cooper (who died in 1792) at Bath'. There is nothing in these dates to raise any difficulty, and, on the whole, we have good reason to hope that we possess in this picture an authentic portrait of the author."

Le Faye does not mention that the portrait was also used by Fanny Lefroy's correspondent, Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh, the sister of William Austen-Leigh, as the frontispiece for her own biography of Jane Austen, Personal Aspects of Jane Austen. The biography was published in 1920, although it had been completed in 1895. In the  book, Mary describes the portrait as being "of my great Aunt Jane Austen".

Frontispiece to Mary Augusta Austen Leigh's biography
Published 1920

In the same year, 1920, Lady Victoria Manners and George Charles Williamson, art editor for George Bell and Sons, published a biography of Johan Zoffany. (Two years previously Dr. Williamson had published what is still the only detailed biography of Ozias Humphry.) Manners and Williamson reproduced an image of the portrait from the photographic plate of the portrait taken by Emery Walker, the same image that had been used by Lord Brabourne and by Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh. Manners and Williamson wrote:

"A delightful picture is that of Jane Austen as a girl, which must have been painted in 1790 or thereabouts, and which gives a charming representation of a prim but amusing, cheerful maiden, just as we should have fancied Jane Austen to be."

Up until the third decade of the twentieth century, therefore, the portrait was generally accepted as being a portrait of Jane Austen by Zoffany, and dated to around 1790/91. It was only in the 1930s that, as Le Faye reports, "the question of the portrait's authenticity first became the subject of scholarly study".

R W Chapman

The "scholarly study" in question was the work of Dr Robert Chapman who was secretary to the Clarendon Press in Oxford and was working on his own edition of Jane Austen's Letters. According to Le Faye, Chapman discussed the portrait with the staff of the National Portrait Gallery - Mr C K Adams and Sir Henry Hake, the then Director - "and their informed opinion was that the fashion of the child's dress showed the picture to be of a date c.1805".
(C K Adams was Assistant Keeper at the National Portrait Gallery from 1919 until 1951 when he became Director on the death of Henry Hake.)

Le Faye does not, however, discuss the events of the 1930's prior to this  - including the fact that in 1932 Sir Henry Hake had tried to buy the portrait for the Gallery. The owner, Henry Harcourt Rice refused to sell; in fact the portrait was now entailed so Rice had little option, he could not have parted with it even if he wanted to. It is unlikely Henry Hake was aware of this and to add insult to injury as far as the NPG was concerned, John Hubback, the grandson of Jane's brother Francis Austen, then suggested a replica could be supplied. On 20 September 1932 Hubback wrote to the NPG:

"I am a grandson of Sir Francis Austen, Jane Austen’s brother and I have the consent of Mr Edward Rice, also a member of the family to allow a replica to be made of his picture of Jane Austen as a young girl executed by Zoffany about 1791. The enclosed note as to the authenticity of the portrait is from the Austen Leigh’s “Jane Austen her life and letters”, and is communicated to you by the express desire of Mr Rice and of myself also.”

Hubback suggested that his own daughter could paint the replica. Henry Hake declined. With regard to the refusal to sell, Henry Hake recorded that he was "entirely in sympathy with their attitude so long as it was realised that in the event of the picture having to come to this Institution we would like to have an opportunity of acquiring it." He also recorded that "the Austen family are tenacious of their inheritances".

Sir Henry Hake, Director of the
National Portrait Gallery 1927-1951

The portrait obviously remained under discussion as the following month Robert Chapman wrote to Henry Hake saying of the portrait that "I never feel happy about this picture, and I know that R.A Austen-Leigh is very sceptical."

In 1941 C K Adams produced a report in which he said that the fashion of the girl's dress in the portrait "The style of dress with narrow ribbon round high waist, and slightly puffed half sleeves is of the period c1805. In a search I have not found a similar dress on a dated portrait before 1803 when Jane was 28."

ON June 27, 1941, Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh wrote to Chapman about it - the latter has evidently informed him of Adams' assessment. "I presume Adam is a first-class authority on period-dress & that he can be trusted therefore," he wrote.

Where did Adams look? It is worth bearing in mind this was 1941, at the height of the Second World War. Many of the NPG's own paintings had been evacuated. (You can read about this on the NPG website HERE.) Communications were limited. Rather different to the situation now where thousands of images of portraits can be viewed with the click of a few buttons on a keyboard.

According to Le Faye, "Succeeding members of the NPG staff down the ensuing decades have never wavered from this opinion and it was this weight of authority which led Dr Chapman to say in his Facts and Problems published in 1948 that the picture could not be of Jane Austen."

At the very same time, in May 1948, the National Portrait Gallery purchased the portrait of Jane Austen believed to have been drawn by Cassandra and issued a press release stating that they now owned the only authenticated portrait of the novelist. The Cassandra sketch had been tracked down three years earlier by Elizabeth Jenkins, a colleague of Robert Chapman's at the Clarendon Press and a secretary of a Jane Austen society and it had now come up for sale. The timing of these two events cannot have been a coincidence. Robert Chapman and the NPG were obviously working together and it is not altogether clear who was influencing whom.

Le Faye then quotes a response to the Jane Austen Society from Sir Oliver Millar, Surveyor of the Queen's Pictures who in 1983 wrote:

"I would (a) be very surprised if the work was by Zoffany and (b) even more surprised if it had been painted before 1800. Indeed, on grounds of style and costume it cannot be earlier. Moreover, if it was by Zoffany, who returned to England when Jane became fifteen, another improbability arises. The sitter must be under that age. On all counts, therefore, the portrait should be dismissed from the iconography of Jane Austen. I have discussed it with the authority of the National Portrait Gallery [R.J.G. Walker] who is working on many Regency Problems and he is firmly of the same opinion."

Le Faye does not mention that Millar had been a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery since 1972. She also does not mention that R J G Walker's in his Regency Portraits, published in 1985, attributes the portrait to Ozias Humphry.

In a letter dated 12 March 1985 to Madeleine Marsh who had been researching the portrait, Richard Walker wrote "I am sure you are on the right track with your attribution to Ozias Humphry. It fits very well with his style of painting and your research shows that he would have been a likely artist to have been employed by the family".

National Portrait Gallery card holding an image of the portrait
with NPG date stamp 1987. Date is given as c.1790

Le Faye also does not divulge the contents of a letter written to her just two years before her article was published in The Book Collector. On 2 October 1993 Richard Walker wrote to Deirdre Le Faye about the portrait. Having noted that Le Faye had not mentioned it in her new edition of Jane Austen; A Family Record, Walker wrote,

"I imagine, like me, you do not wholeheartedly believe in it. But I have been asked to write something about it for an exhibition to take place in the Olympia Antique Fair in February, and wonder if you have had any second thoughts since we last met. I think the costume experts have been over-confident and the dress she wears could be of the 1790's - but I am still not convinced she is Jane" 

Why Walker remained unconvinced he does not say but apparently it was not on the grounds of costume. His doubts about the dating of the costume were not reported by Le Faye.

Le Faye then turns to the issue of the dating of the dress. She says that since 1948 the Jane Austen Society has on various dates approached such costume historians as Doris Langley Moore, Anne Buck, Madeleine Ginsburg and most recently Dr (now Professor Emeritus) Aileen Ribeiro of the Courtauld Institute, who have given their opinions. "Here again there is unanimity - the child's dress shows the picture cannot be earlier than 1800 and could even be as late as 1810, median date therefore 1805."

The previous year, on 25 June 1995, an article by Simon Tait about the painting appeared in The Observer newspaper titled Portrait Tests Experts' Pride and Prejudices. The article quoted Margaret Hammond, who had made a 20 year study of the picture, as saying that the Rice picture was of Jane Austen but that Jacob Simon of the National Portrait Gallery claimed that the dress invalidated the claim. It was his opinion which led to an export licence being granted for the picture. "The crux of the whole matter" Mrs Hammond was reported as saying, "is the costume, that it could not have been worn by a girl of that age before 1805. I just thought that was wrong, I've investigated it and I have a list as long as your arm of pictures painted by Reynolds, Gainsborough and others showing children in costumes of that sort, dating as far back as the date of Jane's birth in 1775."

(For examples of dresses including narrow ribbons, high waists and puffed half sleeves before 1800 please see my post HERE.)

The article went on to say that "she is now supported in this by Dr Aileen Ribeiro of the Courtauld Institute and by Richard Walker, a former NPG curator and Keeper of the Royal Collection until 1991."

The following day, Monday 26 June 1995, Jacob Simon faxed Aileen Ribeiro from the National Portrait Gallery:

"Since speaking I have seen the Observer article which claims you support an early dating of the Rice Portrait. I enclose the article and Richard Walker's.
Would you be prepared to write a short letter to the Observer on the dating of the portrait - the shorter it is the more likely they'll publish in full!"

On 2 July 1995 a letter from Aileen Ribeiro was published in The Observer. Ribeiro said that "When asked to comment a few years ago, I noted that this type of costume, as worn by young girls, could range in date from the late eighteenth century to the early nineteenth. Now I am sure a date in the first decade of the nineteenth century is right." Her letter concluded "the identity of the sitter cannot be known; except to say it is not Jane Austen."

Art critic, curator and long time supporter of the Rice Portrait, Angus Stewart, has informed me that in 1993 he visited Aileen Ribeiro at the Courtauld Institute and she confirmed that the costume could be dated late eighteenth century. It was Angus Stewart who, that same year, had asked Richard Walker to write something for the Olympia Art and Antiques Fair to be held in February 1994.

What was it that persuaded Aileen Ribeiro to change her mind and and become so definite that the portrait could not possibly date to the late eighteenth century? And why was the National Portrait Gallery actively campaigning against the Rice Portrait and encouraging Dr Ribeiro to write to the newspaper? Aileen Ribeiro sent a copy of her letter to the National Portrait Gallery. On the accompanying postcard she said, "Let's hope the whole thing quietly goes away!"

Needless to say, it hasn't.

Deirdre Le Faye claimed that "The owner and those in favour of the authenticity of the portrait...prefer to brush aside the weight of scholarly opinion ranged against them." But scholarly opinion was clearly not as unanimous as Le Faye would have us believe. Richard Walker had written to her to say he was not convinced by the dating of the dress and Aileen Ribeiro had previously stated that it could have dated from the later eighteenth century although she later retracted this opinion. The V&A had, according to a report in the NPG archive, also stated the dress could date to 20 years from 1790 until they were informed it was Jane Austen and then they too retracted their opinion.

As far back as 1983 Deirdre Le Faye had written that she did not "for a moment" believe that the portrait was of Jane Austen the novelist. In her review of Le Faye's article in the TLS, Claudia Johnson remarks that Le Faye 'crosses the boundary into perverseness.' The tremendous amount of hubris on the part of many of the people involved in this story is astounding.

In 1917 an editorial in The Times, while commenting on another case involving an Ozias Humphry painting, remarked that "the lesson for experts...is the old lesson - not to be too 'cocksure' in their opinions, and still more, not to be too positive in stating them."

It is a lesson which apparently still has not been learned.




Thank you for reading. In the next post I will examine the second part of Deirdre Le Faye's article and evaluate her theory that the portrait is of Mary Anne Campion, the daughter of Jane Austen's cousin of the same name, and that the artist was a Revd Matthew William Peters.

 

Facts Are Stubborn Things - Why a Brimful of Tricks doesn't stack up - Part Two

Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman

In July 2014 the Times Literary Supplement published an article written by Austen scholar Dr Kathryn Sutherland and journalist Henrietta Foster titled Brimful of Tricks (Brimful). You can read the full article HERE. I've discussed the first section of the article, on the history of the Rice portrait, in the first of this two part blogpost HERE.

In this second part I am analysing the latter half of the Brimful article, which examines the life of Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman and advances a radical and surprising new theory - that he forged the portrait of Jane Austen as an act of revenge.

Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman was the eldest son of Colonel Thomas Harding Newman and his first wife, Harriet Cartwright, who died when Thomas was four. Sutherland and Foster set out the facts of his life succinctly: "Newman was born in 1811 at Hornchurch, Essex, into a rich family with interests in Jamaica and Barbados. His family owned Clacton Hall in Essex and Black Callerton in Northumberland, and he hunted with his own pack of foxhounds. He went up to Wadham College, Oxford, in1829 and was elected a demy at Magdalen College in 1832 and a Fellow from 1846, remaining in post until 1873, when he resigned his fellowship and returned to Essex on receipt of a large increase in income. He died in April 1882."

(For more on the Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman you can also read my post HERE.)

The authors of Brimful recount that on December 30, 1880 Thomas Harding Newman wrote to his former Magdalen colleague John Rouse Bloxam (nephew of the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence) and informed him of his wish that their mutual friend Morland Rice, a great-nephew of Jane Austen,  should have the portrait of Austen which had come into his family via Harding Newman's stepmother, his father's second wife, Eliza Hall.

Harding Newman wrote:

"I should like to give another painting of Jane Austen, the novelist by Zoffany to her relative your neighbour Morland Rice. It is of a girl about 15 and came into my family the gift of Col. Austen of Chippington [sic] to my mother-in-law, or rather stepmother, my father’s second wife; who was a great admirer of the novelist. I can remember Col. Austen visiting this place. Latterly when at Bramber I have failed to fall in with my old friend. I don’t think he can have forgotten me. I was at Oxford when he knocked his head against a post and ascertained that the post was the harder of the two." 

This is the first known written reference to the portrait.

On Easter Monday 1883, a year after Harding Newman's death, John Rouse Bloxam wrote a letter to his friend General Gibbes Rigaud:

"Talking of paintings Hardman-Newman [sic], nephew of Dr Newman has just sent me a full-length portrait by Zoffany of Miss Jane Austen, the novelist, to give to Rice, who is a connection of the Lady. Rice is much pleased with it – I knew Newman intended to leave it to Rice but did not – but his nephew to his great credit has given it." (Correspondence held at Bodleian Library, Oxford)

Letter from John Rouse Bloxam to General Gibbes Rigaud

The Brimful article then goes on to examine accounts of the Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman. From these reports they suggest that the character that emerges from the reminiscences of his contemporaries casts doubt on the entire provenance of the Rice portrait.

The authors refer to the reminiscences of two brothers - Lewis and William Tuckwell, both of whom refer to Thomas Harding Newman's penchant for playing practical jokes. It should, however, be noted that neither of the Tuckwell brothers was a contemporary of Harding Newman; William Tuckwell was eighteen years younger than Harding Newman, while Lewis Tuckwell was almost thirty years his junior. William Tuckwell's resminiscences were published in 1901, and as Owen Cheswick remarked, one of his foibles was "to pretend to be much older than he was." Lewis Tuckwell's Old Magdalen Days was not published until 1913. "Reminiscences" written so long after the fact should be treated with a degree of caution. Nevertheless, the reports of Harding Newman as being a consummate practical joker seem justified and many are the tales of the pranks he used to play. William Tuckwell recorded that while many of his sayings and pranks survived, they were mainly too coarse for repetition.

The third biography referenced by Sutherland and Foster is by W.D. Macray who in his Register of the Members of St Mary Magdalen College, Oxford (1909), recorded of Harding Newman:

"Possessing artistic taste and knowledge, he yet, by an unrestrained indulgence of humour which led to great eccentricity, practically often acted as the College jester, and it must be said that it was well for the College, and all for any parish in which he might have lived, that he never became the incumbent of any benefice in the gift of the College."

Thomas Harding Newman was undoubtedly a practical joker, a man who delighted in acting the fool to entertain his friends and peers.

Sutherland and Foster then move on the obituary of Thomas Harding Newman, which appeared in the periodicals Life and Modern Society in June 1882. It is rather unfortunate that throughout the obituary the anonymous author refers to "James" Harding Newman rather than "Thomas" - and it is unlikely therefore that he is writing from personal knowledge or acquaintance with Thomas Harding Newman himself.

According to this obituary, titled "An Oxford Eccentric", The Rev. Dr Harding Newman was a very funny man:

''Imagine, then, in Dr Newman an old gentleman of the middle height, sprightly and springy; the countenance oval, the nostrils large, the nose rectangular and serving at the tip to support his spectacles, the mouth rather broad and rippling with humour, the eye prominent and evironed by a huge ring, and the forehead partially concealed under a chestnut wig cut straight; in a word a Pickwick without embonpoint, and with a sarcastic in lieu of a weak mouth...he was before all things a raconteur.'' 

He was "from first to last brimful of tricks". The obituary recounts that "his mission was to raise a laugh and he would never spare trouble. He would buy an old picture at some one of the Wych Street shops for a song, touch it up in accordance with his intuitions, and exhibit it to his friends as a genuine old master."

Foster and Sutherland advise that "Wych Street probably refers to an ancient medieval street in London, standing where the Aldwych is now, and known for its abundance of booksellers and antiquarian shops".

This description of Wych Street is not quite accurate however. A contemporary reader would have immediately understood the reference  - for Wych Street along with nearby Holywell Street was a famously disreputable area, well known not so much for antiquarian shops as for selling pornographic books and pictures. As early as 1849, a letter to The Times decried "Holy-well Street and Wych Street in which are shops the windows of which display books and pictures of the most disgusting and obscene character." It was here that one of the most prolific publishers of pornography in the nineteenth century, William Dugdale, plied his trade. The whole area was finally bulldozed in the early twentieth century as part of a slum clearance scheme.

Wych Street 1870
Illustrated London News

The inference is that Rev. Dr  Harding Newman thought it amusing to buy a pornographic picture in Wych Street and pass it off as a nude painted by an old master. (Perhaps he was also making a more serious philosophical point about the distinction between pornography and art?) This fits perfectly with what we know of Thomas Harding Newman's character, one whose speech was "a trifle to pungent for the staider spirits of the Athenaeum", and a man who was fond of jokes which were "too coarse to be repeated".

Harding Newman was also an antiquarian, like his friend John Rouse Bloxam. Foster and Sutherland state that "it was, apart from Magdalen, the only thing they had in common." Not quite - they did, for example, have a number of friends in common, such as Thomas Henry Whorwood who left bequests to both Bloxam and Harding Newman in his will. When the old gates of Balliol College, dating from 1288, were being thrown out Harding Newman rescued them and installed them at his home at Nelmes. (Subsequently they were recovered and restored to Balliol and are thought to be the oldest gates in the country.)

The authors of Brimful then recount Harding Newman's 1873 libel case against Rev T. H. Griffith who had accused him of "committing an unnatural offence" after "serious reports respecting his character reached the ears of the vicar of the parish." Griffith was accusing Harding Newman of being gay, which at that time was an imprisonable offence and as the later tragic stories of Oscar Wilde  and Alan Turing have shown, discriminatory laws against gay people led to harsh consequences. The jury found in Harding Newman's favour and after finding Griffith guilty of malice towards Harding Newman, awarded £300 to the latter in damages.

Foster and Sutherland suggest that it was the "ongoing scandal" of this case which gave Magdalen a reason to refuse Harding Newman a College living and his obituary records that "Oxford became in his later days anything but a congenial spot". But the assertion by the authors of Brimful that he left Magdalen with a sense of grievance is pure conjecture. According to the obituary in Modern Living, it was the fact that by the 1870's Harding Newman had become something of an anachronism in modern Oxford that was the problem. "The era of the eccentric college fellow is over" the obituarist records, somewhat regretfully. "Newman was the last of his race, and the funniest."

The modernising of the universities had started in the 1850s with the University Reform Act of 1854 which removed the privileges previously enjoyed by descendants and relatives of benefactors. Reform continued gradually during the 1860s culminating in the Cleveland Commission of 1873. Universities were becoming more orientated towards serious scholarship and it seems Thomas Harding Newman was somewhat out of step with this brave new world. "The existence of such a sinecurist in an institution presumably intended for education was an anomaly, an absurdity, and an anachronism" as his obituarist put it and so "when his college decided for him that he had inherited too large a private fortune to continue to retain his fellowship, he acquiesced in a decision which, perhaps, was a little severe, and betook himself to his ancestral home at Nelmes, near Romford."

Foster and Sutherland hypothesise that added to this supposed "sense of grievance" was the "indignity" of being compared to his namesake, the charismatic theologian John Henry Newman. No evidence is put forward to support the assertion that Thomas Harding Newman objected to comparison with his namesake - in fact the evidence we do have points in the opposite direction - that it did not bother him at all and that, on the contrary, Thomas Harding Newman found the confusion between the two Newmans immensely amusing. According to his obituary in Modern Living he once sent a jocular poem to two elderly sisters who had mistakenly written to him instead of to John Henry Newman.

Mary Allies, the daughter of Harding Newman's step-sister Eliza Hall Newman who had married the Rev. Thomas William Allies, wrote in her biography of her father:

"At Oxford he [Thomas Allies] became intimate with the Rev. Thomas Harding Newman, of Magdalen, his future brother-in-law. Thomas Harding was a Newman by accident, for his father, Mr. Newman of Nelmes took the name of Newman instead of Harding. There was thus no relationship between Thomas H. Newman and John Henry Newman, only the difference of the letter T, and both were doctors of divinity after the approved Anglican fashion. This letter T led to many jokes caused by mistaken identity, and no one enjoyed them more than T. H. Newman." 
(Thomas William Allies by Mary H Allies, 1907)

Foster and Sutherland then suggest that Harding Newman comes up with a plan for revenge. The plan is not to embarrass John Henry Newman or Magdalen College directly but more obtusely it is to buy an old portrait, "rework it" to pass it off as Jane Austen and give it to Jane's great-nephew John Morland Rice as a gift. The suggestion is that as Magdalen was also Morland Rice's alma mater and as Rice was a friend of John Rouse Bloxam, the unwitting go-between, who in turn was a lifelong friend and one time curate of John Henry Newman, this deception would embarrass them all, particularly as John Henry Newman was known to enjoy the works of Jane Austen.

John Henry Newman

The authors posit that in order to make the deception more plausible, Harding Newman invented a provenance to the portrait by saying that it had been given to his stepmother Eliza Hall by Colonel Thomas Austen. The involvement of their mutual acquaintance John Rouse Bloxam would give the plan more credence than if he gave the portrait directly to Morland Rice.

So how credible is this theory? Aside from the fact there is no evidence whatsoever that Thomas Harding Newman bore any sense of grievance, jealousy or desire for revenge, and that his supposed means of seeking revenge is more than a little convoluted, there are some other major problems with the theory that the portrait is an elaborate hoax.

An obvious flaw in the theory is that Thomas Harding Newman failed to carry out the supposed plan. Despite his stated intention he never gave the portrait to Morland Rice. The authors suggest that that he "somehow forgets to formalise the arrangement." Is it really credible that if, as this theory suggests, having gone to a huge amount of effort in setting up an elaborate hoax by buying an old portrait and re-working it to look like a young Jane Austen and writing a letter to his friend Bloxham with an invented provenance, in order to exact revenge - he would then simply forget to carry it out? Doesn't sound like much of a revenge! It was left to his nephew, Benjamin Harding Newman to give the portrait to Morland Rice, apparently of his own volition, after Thomas Harding Newman's death in 1882.

There is also the difficulty Harding Newman would have had explaining his plan to his stepsister and daughter of Eliza Hall, Eliza Hall Allies. She was the wife of his close friend Thomas Allies. Both Eliza and Thomas Allies were prominent Tractarians and very close disciples of John Henry Newman. It is incredibly unlikely therefore that they would have colluded in such a scheme to embarrass him. If the account given by Thomas Harding Newman that the portrait had been a gift to his stepmother was a fabrication as is claimed here - then Eliza Hall Allies must have been aware that it had not belonged to her mother. Eliza Allies' sister, Julia Harding Newman, now married to a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, was also still alive at the time and so she too would presumably have had to have been included in the deception to "invent a story" that the portrait had been given to her mother.

Eliza Hall Allies 

According to the authors of Brimful, Thomas Harding Newman forgot to carry out his trick, but his heir  apparently "remembers". Whether they are alleging that the heir, Harding Newman's nephew Benjamin Harding Newman is complicit in the scheme or an innocent patsy, is not clear. If innocent, then he too, according to this theory, is unsurprised by the full-sized portrait of Austen which has suddenly appeared in his uncle's possessions, as is his mother, Anne Lefroy Sadleir (niece of Jane's "first love" Tom Lefroy.) She was living with Benjamin's sister, Harriet Croker, in Hornsey in north London. Harriet's husband was one of the two executors for Thomas Harding Newman. Are we asked to believe that none of these people questioned the story about it being given to Thomas Harding Newman's stepmother if the story was a fabrication?

Then there is the portrait which Harding Newman allegedly faked. He would have had no visual guide to Jane Austen's appearance aside from the engraving by Lizars published in James Edward Austen Leigh's biography in 1869. This engraving was based on a watercolour by James Andrews which in turn was based on the sketch by Cassandra Austen, which is now in the National Portrait Gallery but at that time was still in the private ownership of the Austen family.

The Lizars Engraving

The Andrews watercolour

The Cassandra sketch

Was it coincidence then, that he happened on a portrait which looks so similar in style to the painting of Jane Austen's brother, Edward Austen Knight, now hanging at Chawton House which is believed by many to also be a work by Ozias Humphry?

Edward Austen Knight's Portrait and the Rice Portrait 

And was it also a coincidence that, working from this:

He came up with this:

Which looks more like this:

than like either the Lizars engraving or the Andrews Portrait?

Quite an artistic achievement! According to this theory Thomas Harding Newman was not just a scheming fraudster, he was a talented artist - so talented he could take an old portrait from a junk shop and fashion it in such a way that it fooled, among others:

1 The National Portrait Gallery who wanted to buy it in 1932 
2. Richard Walker of the National Portrait Gallery who listed it as being by Ozias Humphry in his Catalogue of Regency Portraits in 1985
3. Conall Macfarlane, valuer and director at Christie's, who attributed the portrait to Ozias Humphry in 1985
4 Brian Stewart, Director of the Falmouth Art Gallery and co-author of Dictionary of English Portrait Painters up to 1920 and a recognised authority on British portraiture who believed the portrait to be by Ozias Humphry
5. Art Restorer Eva Schwan who examined the portrait in 2010 and believes the portrait to be by Ozias Humphry
6. Art critic and historian Brian Sewell, a long-time supporter of the Rice Portrait until his death in 2015 and
7. Angus Stewart, President of the British Section of the International Association of Art Critics, also a long time supporter of the Rice Portrait 

In spite of the fierce controversy over the subject and the artist, no art expert has ever suggested the Rice Portrait to be a late nineteenth century forgery by an amateur artist nor have experts suggested "possible reworking around the mouth and eye areas" as the authors of Brimful claim. 

The authors of Brimful conclude that "while the alternative provenance sketched here is speculative, the evidence concerning Newman is not." But the character the authors assign to Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman is also speculative. Described as a raconteur, a comedian and a practical joker, in contrast the authors present a bitter, vengeful and resentful man who harboured a sense of grievance, none of which is borne out by the evidence. William Tuckwell, for example, when introducing Harding Newman in his Reminiscences remarked that he claimed "a kindly though certainly not a reverential interest". He seems to have been recalled with great affection by those who remembered his antics at Oxford.

The obituary in Modern Society noted that he was "as prodigal of his hospitality to his friends as he was of his inimitable fun to the entire social circle" and "a thoroughly genial gentleman, who was always the best of good company, never better, perhaps, than after the second bottle of Magdalen port." The "jester" was a gentleman who "never once offended his college common-room". According to Jackson's Oxford Journal, "Dr Newman was a man of high attainments in art, and a very popular member of the Athenaeum Club, and was also well-known in West-end society." He had a wide circle of friends and a large number of inhabitants of the parish were present at the funeral "to witness the sad ceremony," according to the Essex Standard, who also reported that he was "a true-hearted gentleman, kind, courteous, liberal and sympathising."

"The scheme is ingenious and almost foolproof" according to Foster and Sutherland. But without any evidence the only ingenuity is in the febrile imagination of the authors in constructing such a fantastical theory. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the portrayal of Thomas Harding Newman as a vengeful, bitter or jealous man and the alleged motive for this supposed act of forgery is gossamer thin. There is no evidence that this portrait is a late nineteenth century fake. The hypothesis that the provenance was fabricated is unconvincing. "Brimful of tricks" Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman may have been. But scheming fraudster he certainly was not.


Thank you for reading. My next two posts will deal with Deirdre Le Faye's article A Literary Portrait Re-Examined published in The Book Collector winter 1996.

Facts Are Stubborn Things - Why a Brimful of Tricks doesn't stack up - Part One.

On 9 July 2014 The Times Literary Supplement published an article titled 'Brimful of Tricks' co-authored by journalist Henrietta Foster and Austen academic Dr Kathryn Sutherland. You can read the article HERE. In it, the authors sought to dismiss the claim to authenticity of the Rice portrait and to advance an adventurous new theory - that the portrait is a fake, painted by the Rev Dr Thomas Harding Newman.

In the next two blog-posts I will be examining the arguments advanced by Foster and Sutherland in their article, which for convenience I'll refer to as Brimful.

(For background information you can read about the Rice Portrait on wikipedia HERE and in much more detail on the official website HERE. There is a brief summary of the history of the portrait on the Jane Austen Centre website HERE and an overview of the latest evidence on the TLS website HERE.)

The Brimful article is formed of two distinct parts  - the first section is the authors' (not entirely objective!) overview of the history of the portrait. The second part of the article then goes on to look at the character of Rev. Dr Thomas Harding-Newman and to advance the authors' new theory that Rev. Dr Thomas Harding Newman faked the portrait of Jane Austen for malicious reasons of his own.

The partisan nature of the article is hinted at in the very first paragraph: 'The Rice family, who own it [the portrait], and their champions, among whom are some distinguished academics, claim that the girl depicted is Jane Austen, and produce at intervals a new discovery in support of their claim - a new artist, a new hidden message, a linen stamp or yet another family anecdote about Great Aunt Jane.' In a stroke, the flow of new evidence which has steadily emerged is discounted and, as the authors themselves record, 'each new proof of authenticity has been dismissed by the art establishment on one set of grounds or another.' Whether the refusal by the art establishment to even consider the evidence is justified or is motivated by other concerns is, of course, another matter entirely.

The Brimful article moves on to the latest new evidence to emerge - the research carried out by Stephen Cole of Acumé Forensics in 2012 - evidence which is roundly dismissed by Foster and Sutherland. It is therefore worth taking a closer look at the credentials of Stephen Cole. Acumé Forensics is a private company, set up by Stephen Cole and colleague Michael Dixon, together with two former police officers, in 2004. Their expertise is in using all forms of digital technology to solve crime and in this they are leaders in their field. You can see HERE  a list of criminal investigations which they have been involved in. Acumé have also been used for historical investigations: they were employed by National Geographic and ITN to reconstruct the case of Jack the Ripper and they also worked with Clare Balding analysing the film footage for Channel 4's documentary 'Secrets of a Suffragette' on the death of Suffragette Emily Davison, which aired in 2013.

Stephen Cole was asked to examine a photograph of the Rice Portrait which had been taken by Sir Emery Walker, well known photographer, engraver and printer, in 1910. The National Portrait Gallery hold two original glass negatives of the photograph Walker took of the Rice Portrait in that year. It was a high resolution digital scan of these two negatives provided by the National Portrait Gallery that Stephen Cole was asked to analyse.

His conclusion was that there were two signatures of Ozias Humphry, the words  'Jane Austen _7' and the possible date of 178_ in the upper right hand corner of the portrait.

You can read his full report HERE.

Given the reputation of Stephen Cole in his field of expertise, the response of Foster and Sutherland is surprising considering that neither of them claim to be either art experts or experts in digital technology. They explain away the findings as 'the effect of the cracked glaze glinting against the flash of Walker's camera, faults in the film of later version, or even hairline scratches on the original glass negative.' Their dismissal of the findings is quite remarkable. It must be of great comfort to the criminals currently spending a total of 850 years behind bars thanks to Acumé's research to hear that their work can be so easily discounted! Stephen Cole's work is internationally recognised by criminal courts. As such his analysis deserves to be treated with some consideration rather than simply dismissed out of hand. (In a letter to the Times Literary Supplement in response to the Foster/Sutherland article published in August 2014, Stephen Cole was understandably less than impressed by the manner in which his work, and by extension, the reputation of Acumé Forensics had been impugned. In their turn Foster and Sutherland responded that Acumé's expertise was not in authenticating works of art and that they could not see the relevance of Acume's investigation to authenticating the portrait.)

Ozias Humphry, self-portrait

Recent evidence, included that cited above, is suggesting that the portrait is not by Johann Zoffany as was once thought, but by Ozias Humphry, who was a competent but by no means a great portraitist; Humphry's real talent had been in miniatures.

The authors point out that Ozias Humphry would not have been entitled to sign his paintings 'RA' until he was elected to the Royal Academy as a full member in 1791. Until then he should be signing 'ARA' as an associate member. Foster and Sutherland advance this as further evidence that the findings of Stephen Cole are inaccurate.

However, whilst it is true that Ozias Humphry was not admitted as a full member of the Royal Academy until 1791, there is clear evidence that Humphry WAS signing his portraits RA long before this date, and as early as 1786.

In his biography of Ozias Humphry published in 1918, G C Williamson published images of some of Humphry's miniatures which he'd painted in India during his time there from 1785 until 1787, including a miniature of a young boy, Saib Zada, son and heir to Asoph ul Dowlah whose portrait Humphry also painted while at Lucknow in 1786. At the time Williamson was writing his biography these miniatures were in the ownership of R.S. Aitchison. The miniature of Saib Zaida later came into the ownership of Valerie Eliot, widow of TS Eliot, and after her death it was sold along with the rest of her collection at Christie's in 2013 for £56,250. It is signed by 'Ozias Humphry RA Pinxt' and is dated 1786. As far as I am aware no-one is claiming that this portrait is a fake, despite the fact Humphry had signed the portrait RA a full five years before he was formally entitled to do so.

Entry in Blouin Art Sales Index

Saib Zada by Ozias Humphry in G C Williamson
  Life and Works of Ozias Humphry, R.A. London, 1918, p 146.
reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Brimful article goes on to point out that until the 1980s the painting was thought to be by Zoffany and so it was. But misattribution is not that unusual. Ozias Humphry's The Ladies Waldegrave as Venus and Juno (not to be confused with Joshua Reynolds' The Ladies Waldegrave), for example, was once thought to have been painted by Romney. The portrait was sold by art dealers Lewis and Simmons for $100,000 to New York art collector Henry Edward Huntington as being a portrait of Mrs Siddons and Miss Kemble by George Romney. The latter subsequently sued for breach of warranty.

The Ladies Waldegrave by Ozias Humphry

It took a seven day court case in May 1917 in the Kings Bench Division in front of Mr Justice Darling for the matter to be decided. The portrait had been owned by a Mr John Adams and apparently 'the family got into the habit of calling it Reynolds.' (1).  The case ended suddenly when the plaintiff produced a sketch of the painting which had been discovered in the archives of the Royal Academy and which was undoubtedly by Ozias Humphry with his distinctive monogram of an H within an O in the bottom right-hand corner. Moreover, it was held that the subjects of the portrait were not Mrs Siddons and Miss Kemble but (Charlotte) Maria and (Anne) Horatia Waldegrave. No blame was attached to the defendants, who had sold the portrait believing it was a Romney.

The Times, London, England,  24 May 1917: 4

As the Devonian Yearbook for 1918 remarked in its article The Great Picture Case - 'an interesting feature of the case is the evidence it gives of the fallibility of experts and of the fictitious value of pictures.'

The Times put it more bluntly. 'The fallibility of expert judgements in the matter of art has long been notorious, and a single mistake, however serious, need not necessarily cast discredit on the skills of those who make it,' the paper observed in its editorial of May 24, 1917. 'The experts who blundered in this instance may feel a little sore.' After recounting other mistakes of the art world, the author of the editorial continued with the following advice: 'the lesson for experts from these and other cases is the old lesson - not to be too "cocksure" in their opinions, and still more, not to be too positive in stating them.'

After the sudden culmination of the court case, the Humphry portrait of the Ladies Waldegrave was offered by the defendants to the National Portrait Gallery. It was thought it may have been of interest as a rare example of Ozias Humphry's work in oils. Presumably the offer was rejected by the NPG as the portrait is now in private hands.

It was in the 1980's that Ozias Humphry's name was connected to the Rice Portrait. The authors of Brimful of Tricks record that art historian Madeleine Marsh suggested it was by Ozias Humphry and in this she was supported by an insurance valuation of 1985 by fine art valuer Conall Macfarlane, who for many years was a director of Christie's Auction House. In his valuation he described the portrait as by Ozias Humphry and of a 'Portrait of a girl, possibly Jane Austen but certainly a member of the Austen family shown standing full length in a white dress holding a green parasol, a landscape beyond - signed with initials'. He goes on to say: 'Recent research would appear to indicate that this may be a portrait of the novelist as a child, circa 1790.'

Valuation by Christie's in 1985

The authors of Brimful don't mention that the National Portrait Gallery also attributed the portrait to Ozias Humphry in their Directory of Regency Portraits published in 1985. NPG curator RichardWalker stated that the portrait which had formerly been attributed to Zoffany was more likely to be by Ozias Humphry and was of a young girl in the costume of about 1805, when Jane would have been 30. As Ozias Humphry went blind in 1797 this was an impossibility - which just goes to show that the experts at the NPG, like other experts, are capable of making mistakes.

(In the same year the linen stamp bearing the name W Legg was discovered on the back of the canvas which the NPG then claimed was proof that the portrait was painted after 1800. I have covered this issue at length in previous posts on this blog. I do not believe that this evidence is in any way conclusive. It is quite possible that this is not the stamp of William Legg the colourman from Reading but of another W Legg.)

The Brimful article then moves on discuss the written evidence for the portrait. As the authors note, the first known reference to the portrait was in December 1880 when Rev Dr. Thomas Harding Newman wrote to his friend John Rouse Bloxham that he had a portrait of the novelist that he would like to give to their mutual friend and Jane's relative, John Morland Rice. But how much weight can - or should - be placed on this lack of written evidence? After all, the first documentary evidence for the Cassandra sketch held in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), dates only from 1869 when it was produced for James Edward Austen-Leigh's Memoir. Like the Rice Portrait, no mention of the Cassandra sketch was made when Richard Bentley was looking for a portrait to accompany his reissue of Austen's works in 1833. And the Byrne portrait, which I believe Dr Sutherland (as do I) thinks may also be a portrait of Jane Austen, has no written documentary evidence whatsoever.

Indeed, the lack of documentary evidence is not really that surprising. If there's one thing the Austens were good at, it was destroying documentary evidence. Cassandra Austen destroyed most of the letters from Jane, and then in 1865 when Admiral Francis Austen's daughter Frances (Fanny) inherited all the letters Jane Austen had written to Fanny's mother, she promptly burned the lot. Hardly any documentary evidence survives of the Austen family. As Caroline Austen wrote to her brother Austen-Leigh when he was preparing to write his biography of Jane Austen - 'I am sure you will do justice to what there is - but I feel it must be a difficult task to dig up the materials, so carefully have they been buried out of our sight by the past generat[ion]' (2)

It is likely that the only reason Austen Leigh wrote his biography of Jane Austen at all was to pre-empt someone else writing it - at least that way the family could control the narrative. As Caroline wrote in her Memoir in 1867, 'A memoir of Miss Jane Austen has often been asked for, and strangers have declared themselves willing and desirous to undertake the task of writing it - and have wondered that the family should have refused to supply the necessary materials.' 'Private' would be one word to describe the Austen family; 'Secretive' would be equally appropriate.

Did James Edward Austen-Leigh know about the Rice portrait? I believe that he probably did. I have described HERE how Colonel Thomas Harding Newman's third wife Anna Maria Parry was connected to Speen, the small village between Kintbury and Newbury. Anna Maria's father Charles Parry was the Vicar of Speen and her mother, Mary Parry, rented her house to James Edward Austen-Leigh for four years, from 1833 until 1837 when he inherited nearby Scarlets. When he moved out his mother Mary and sister Caroline moved into the house, which by now had been inherited by Anna Maria Parry and her sister, Harriet Allen. According to Deirdre Le Faye's Chronology they took over the house for one year. However it seems that Mary Austen and Caroline Austen remained at Speen until after Mary's death in 1843. According to Le Faye, Caroline Austen left Speen on July 10, 1844. Anna Maria Parry had married Thomas Harding Newman in 1840 and they initially lived in Northam near Bideford, Devon, where Harding Newman's son also lived. Later they moved to Speen and are recorded as living here on the 1851 census where they remained until their respective deaths in 1856 and 1872. Given these links it is likely that James Edward Austen-Leigh and Thomas Harding Newman did know each other, in which case it is also highly likely that James Edward Austen-Leigh knew that Thomas Harding Newman possessed a portrait of Jane Austen which had been given to his wife.

So why did James Edward Austen-Leigh not use the portrait in his Memoir? It is possible that this portrait had - for some reason - become a subject of embarrassment or resentment to this side of the Austen family. Despite their efforts to present a close knit loving family, one does not have to look far under the surface to realise that this was very far from reality, despite the Austen family's efforts at concealment. It appears that by the time Austen-Leigh became persuaded that a biography of his aunt was necessary, that there was already a serious rift within the family.

Foster and Sutherland state that Austen-Leigh's biography was 'a joint effort by various relatives who had known the novelist.' It was a joint effort - but only from certain sections of the family. It did not include the members of Jane's brother Edward Austen Knight's family. As Dr Sutherland explains in her own excellent introduction to Austen-Leigh's Memoir of Jane Austen, before publishing his biography of Jane Austen, Austen-Leigh had written to Edward's daughter Fanny Knight, now Lady Knatchbull, asking for sight of Jane's letters to her sister Cassandra which Fanny Knight had inherited. His request had been refused, not just by Fanny, who was now senile, but also by Fanny's sister Elizabeth Rice and her daughter Louisa. In the end, Austen-Leigh had to publish without them.

That there was a family rift is also suggested by the later actions of Lord Brabourne, Edward Knatchbull. As Foster and Sutherland recount, Fanny Knight's son, Lord Brabourne, in 1884 published his Letters of Jane Austen which was intended as a rival publication to Austen-Leigh's Memoir. Dr Sutherland in her introduction to the Memoir relates how when Brabourne published his mother's collection of letters 'he attached to them a short introduction whose chief purpose appears to be to oust Austen-Leigh's biography and assert his rival claims to the more authentic portrait.' Brabourne is explicit; these letters 'have never been in [Austen-Leigh's] hands' and they 'afford a picture of her such as no history written by another person could give.' (3)

The two sides of the family were clearly in competition with each other and Lord Brabourne did use the Rice portrait as his frontispiece. But immediately after his own book was published, he set about selling off the precious letters written by Jane that he had inherited. They obviously held no sentimental value for him. In 1919 Austen scholar Robert Chapman wrote to Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh about it: 'It is very disappointing about the Letters, I wish they might have come back to the family, and [I'm] incensed at the vandalism of the late Lordship - scandalous old man!' (4)

Perhaps James Edward Austen-Leigh and his siblings know very well about the portrait - but for reasons of their own, chose to ignore it.

Foster and Sutherland remark that 'even at the time, it seemed extraordinary to some that a family as socially aspiring as the Austens should nowhere have mentioned the fact before 1883 that their eminent ancestor had been painted by one of the great portraitists of the age.' But while Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman referred to the painting as being by Zoffany, there is no evidence of what previous owners believed. It now seems likely that it was painted by Ozias Humphry, who was a lesser known portraitist. Furthermore, we have absolutely no idea what the Austen family discussed between them. If the portrait had been commissioned by another branch of the family, from which they were now estranged, and had never been in the possession of the immediate relations of Jane Austen, is it really so extraordinary that we have no documentary record of them mentioning the fact?

Despite being previously unaware of the portrait, there were many in the next generation who nevertheless believed it to be a portrait of the novelist. Foster and Sutherland relate that 'members of the family were urged to authenticate the painting.' There was no 'urging' as far as I can tell - however the recipient of the portrait, Morland Rice, having been given the portrait by a descendant of the Harding Newman family, was naturally keen to ascertain its history, and there is no reason why this should be surprising. The authors relate how:

'Fanny Caroline Lefroy, a great-niece born three years after Austen's death and then in her sixties, considered to know "more than anybody about family history", wrote to Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh on October 23, 1883. "I never heard before of the portrait of Jane Austen . . . . I suppose Mr Morland Rice can throw some light on the matter, or is it a picture he has picked up of a Jane Austen painted by Romney but not the Jane. Mr Morland Austen picked one up & fondly believed it was her, but it was painted at Malta where she never was." '

But when you read the whole letter which Fanny wrote to Mary, she sounds much more open to the idea of it being genuine:

I never heard before of the portrait of Jane Austen I feel sure it never was either at Steventon or Chawton. My mother & Aunt Caroline would certainly have recollected it had they ever seen it. In 1789 the year it was painted she was a school girl in the Abbey School here. Possibly she might have been to Godmersham to stay with her cousins & companionise her brother Edward & possibly Mr and Mrs Knight had it done. I suppose Mr Morland Rice can throw some light on the matter or is it a picture he has picked up of a Jane Austen painted by Romney but not the Jane. Mr Morland Austen picked one up & fondly believed it was her, but it was painted at Malta where she never was. I will write & ask Cassie if she knows anything of it. I am sure her father & mother never had any money to spend on portraits of their children. If it is genuine would not would not [sic] Mr M.R. generously allow it to be photographed? I should greatly like to see it. (5)


(In her article A Literary Portrait Re-examined, published in the Book Collector in 1996, Deirdre Le Faye in quoting the above letter writes 1787 but I think this is a transcription error for I read the date as 1789. See below.)

The date 1789 from Fanny Lefroy's letter to
Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh

According to Foster and Sutherland, a year later Fanny is still 'struggling with one or two difficulties,' as recorded in a letter of September 9, 1884 from Morland Austen to Morland Rice They don't finish the sentence as he actually wrote it however. In full it reads: 'Except for one or two difficulties, she would have no doubts about its genuineness.'

The complete letter is reproduced below:

My dear Rice,

I thank you very much for your interesting letter, which puts the matter in a very different light. I saw Miss Lefroy yesterday. She knows more than anybody about the family history. She knew before of the portrait in your possession. Except for one or two difficulties, she would have no doubts about its genuineness. 

1. Jane A. was born Dec, 1775. The date on your picture is (she thinks) 1788 or 9, making her not 14.

2. Her parents did not go to Bath till they left Stevenson in 1801.

3. Jane and Cassandra were at school in Reading at that period. 

But on the other hand her Uncle and Aunt Leigh Perrot often visited Bath and she may have been with them, also "Northanger Abbey" was written long before 1801 and the local colouring is such as to show that she must have been there before she wrote it. 

There was only one Col Austen of Kippington, my father's elder brother, who married 1st Miss Morland, your mother's dear friend from girlhood, and from whom you have your own name as your mother told me three years ago.  

2nd Caroline Manning - who now lives at Hurstpierpoint and whom you met the other day.

My father was a second cousin of Jane Austen. My brother sold Kippington on inheriting some twenty years since and built a new house on the really old family property at Horsmonden, which my father had from old John Austen from Broadford and also the Tenterden property from another branch. Sir Henry A. whose wife (as mentioned in his life) was the great friend of Cowper the poet. The Tunbridge branch was the same. 

If you really want it, I could perhaps get the whole pedigree for you. 

We live in 45 Hertford St.Mayfair and are only here till the 24th. 

We should be very glad to see you any time you may be in London, if you will look us up I may have some more information to give you. 

Yours sincerely 

H Morland Austen 


Fanny's certainty about the date is intriguing. In her letter to Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh she refers to '1789 the year it was painted,' and in Morland Austen's letter he says 'the date on your portrait is (she thinks) 1788 or 9'  - which suggests that she has seen the date on the portrait itself.

Far from 'invent an alternative provenance,' as the authors of Brimful state, it seems to me that Fanny Lefroy and Morland Rice are quite reasonably trying to square the information they have been given about the portrait with the known facts about Jane Austen's younger years. Quite possibly Morland Rice knew that Zoffany was in India from 1784 until 1790 which of course presents him with a difficulty if the portrait was painted in 1788 or 1789 as Fanny Lefroy believed. Doubts about the Zoffany attribution may also explain why Romney was mentioned as the possible artist.

The case might have been different if the mistake over the artist had not occurred  - Ozias Humphry had been in India at the same time as Zoffany - however he returned earlier, in the spring of 1788, and we know that later that year he was staying at Stephen Woodgate's residence in Sevenoaks as his post was redirected there from London. See HERE for the record in the Royal Academy. Ozias' brother William was married to Elizabeth Woodgate and Humphry spent a great deal of time at Seal and Sevenoaks. 

The portrait was used by James Edward's son, William, and the latter's nephew Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh in their biography of 1913 and by his daughter Mary Augusta Austen-Leigh in her biography, published in 1920. And as the authors of Brimful relate, John Hubback, the grandson of Jane's brother, Francis, was particularly enthusiastic about it - although whether he was in a position to exert pressure on the National Portrait Gallery, as is asserted by the authors, is very questionable.

Frontispiece to Mary Augusta Austen Leigh's
Personal Aspects of Jane Austen
Published 1920

In fact it was the NPG who first contacted Hubback via a Mrs Graveson because at the time Director Henry Hake was hunting for a portrait of Jane Austen for his gallery. John Hubback then contacted Henry Edward Harcourt Rice and subsequently wrote back to the NPG directly. He informed Hake that Henry Rice did not wish to sell the portrait but that he was willing for a copy to be made. Hubback suggested his own daughter, who was an artist, could carry out the task. Hake met with Hubback and explained that the Trustees did not buy modern copies of portraits. He did however note in a memorandum of the meeting on 6 October 1932 that ‘in the event of the picture having to come to this Institution we would like to have the opportunity of acquiring it.’(6)

One can assume, therefore, that at this stage the NPG were happy to accept the portrait as genuine or why would they wish to acquire it?

It was only later that NPG Director, Henry Hake, perhaps persuaded by Austen academic Robert Chapman who was not an enthusiast of the Rice Portrait, came out against it. After the Gallery acquired the 'Cassandra scribble' their position hardened still further. It was only after this that Richard Austen Leigh, co-author of the Austen biography published in 1913, reported that he had always had his doubts about the portrait. One can't help wondering how things would have worked out if the Rice family had sold it to the NPG in 1932.

In the next post I will look at the next part of the Brimful of Tricks article, which examines the life of Rev. Dr. Thomas Harding Newman and makes a quite extraordinary claim - that the Rice Portrait is in fact a fake.






References

(1) The Times May 16, 1817.
(2) Caroline Austen to JEAL NPG RWC/HH. fos 4-7 in Sutherland, Kathryn (Ed) J.R. Austen-Leigh A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections (Oxford University Press, 2002) 
pp186-7.
(3) Ibid. Sutherland. Introduction: xxv
(4) Hampshire Record Office 23M93/97/4
(5) Hampshire Record Office 39M89/F25/2
(6) Rice Family Archive
(7) Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery