THIS is Jane Austen as a teenager, newly authenticated as the only image of the author as a girl. For 200 years readers have had to settle for an amateur watercolour by Jane’s elder sister, Cassandra, showing her as a maid in a cloth cap.

But new evidence shown to The Times reveals Austen as a pink-cheeked girl, aged about 15, dressed by her great-uncle in the finest creation she would ever have worn. Born into the impoverished branch of the Austen family, Jane was taken under the wing of Francis Austen, only to be abandoned by her rich relatives upon his death.

For decades the portrait, now owned by the Rice family, direct descendants of Austen’s brother, Edward, has been hidden away while academics argued that the sitter could not have been Jane because her dress and hairstyle were too modern.

But now experts on art, costume and literature have come forward to present a compelling case. Conal MacFarlane, who evaluated the portrait for Christie’s, authenticated the painting as the work of Ozias Humphry.

While art historians have claimed that the costume dated from no earlier than 1805, Humphry could not have painted the portait later than 1797, when he became blind.

Costume collectors have now discredited the argument that her sparkling muslin dress could not have existed before 1805. Lillian and Ted Williams, owners of one of the world’s largest costume collections, have bought a number of similar gowns made in the 1780s.

“We find several elements that clearly suggest an 18th- century dating,” they said in a joint statement. “In this portrait, we note the fullness of the cut of the dress with substantial distribution of its fabric around the bodice, rather than trained in the rear in the Empire style.

“Furthermore, the gauze gathered around the neckline . . . is consistent with late-18th-century garniture.” The shoes and parasol would also have been available at the time.

Despite the absence of references to the portrait in Jane’s 190 surviving letters, there are numerous references to a muslin dress in her novels. It matches one in Mansfield Park, given to the heroine, Fanny, by her uncle. The white dress reappears in Northanger Abbey, when Henry Tilney describes the heroine Catherine’s dress as a “sprigged (spotted) muslin robe”.

Another clue is in Sense and Sensibility. Marianne’s sister, Margaret, mocks her for wearing a miniature of a man around her neck, until it is revealed that the portrait is of their late, great-uncle who, like Francis, left his nieces nothing in his will. In the painting, the central detail is a miniature hanging around the girl’s neck, which suggests the image of an old man. Could this be the same old man who was financing the painting? But the most intriguing pointer is in her final, unfinished work, Sanderton. She mentions in detail a couple’s wish to buy their child an umbrella of the type held by the subject of the Rice portrait.

Marilyn Butler, Rector of Exeter College, Oxford, and a leading Austen expert, said: “There was a big fad for green umbrellas around 1788, at the time the portrait was painted. This reference does seem to be an emphatic memory.”

Members of the Austen family have long disputed that Jane is the subject because there is no record in either Jane or her family’s letters of her sitting for the portrait.

But Professor Butler said that the family had good reason to deny the portrait.

The current owner, Henry Rice, claims that Jane’s portrait was commissioned by Francis, who also sat for Humphry. However, despite his generosity during his lifetime, Francis did not widely distribute his inheritance to the poorer ends of the Austen family. Jane struck back with her first published book, Sense and Sensibility, which satirises the rich arm of a family that leaves its relations for dust.

The portrait’s inheritors were powerless to dispose of it. Professor Butler said: “She was writing offensive books about them, but the family couldn’t get rid of the portrait because of an entail in Francis Austen’s will.” An entail was a common provision in wills of the period that stipulated that none of the estate’s major possessions, including all of the paintings, could be given away or sold. Luckily for Thomas Austen, the beneficiary of the will, the lawyer charged with enforcing the entail was his brother-in-law. Thomas Austen gave the painting away to Jane’s second cousin as a wedding present shortly after the author’s death in 1817. He then requested that a new inventory of the entailed posssessions be drawn up. Professor Butler added: “The archive not only conjures the image of a man hastily covering his tracks, it also helps to explain why there is no record of the event, or the picture itself, among the (wealthy) Austens’ documents.”

Portrait of the author as a young woman

Mr Fowle, a family friend, said that she was “certainly pretty — bright and a good deal of colour in her face — like a doll. No, that would not give at all the idea, for she had so much expression — she was like a child — quite a child, very lively and full of humour.” Or, as Caroline put it: “Hers was the first face I can remember thinking pretty.”
— Patrick O’Hanlon

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