Jane Austen's portraits: Mary weighs in (I)

The disputed Rice Portrait of a young girl who might or might not be Jane Austen has failed to sell at auction on Thursday, ending an odd period in the mainstream media where Jane Austen's appearance was a topic of discussion. The portrait, and a recent controversy in which a British publisher retouched another Austen portrait to make her look prettier for public consumption, touches on several issues about authorship, appearance and the Austen industry. One day, I will figure out how to write an entire, publishable article about this, but in the meantime, here is part I of my blogthoughts.

1. The Rice Portrait
To sum up, a portrait of a young girl painted circa 1800 (give or take 10 years) was put up for auction in New York on Thursday with the selling price anticipated to be from $400,000–$800,000. The portrait is owned by the Rice family, descedents of Austen's brother Edward. The family claims that the portrait is of Austen, but there are no collaborating documents or mention of Austen having her portrait done in any letters. Though the painting's provenance was uncertain enough that the National Portrait Gallery in London wouldn't accept it, Christie's was happy to auction it as a portrait of Jane Austen. However, bids for the portrait failed to meet the reserve and it was withdrawn from sale.

I'm secretly quite pleased about this. The lack of interest in the portrait reassures me that people don't really care about Austen's appearance, at least not to the extent of $400,000. Moreover, considering that another painting by the same artist sold a few years ago for a $56,000, the anticipated asking price seems a little high, and shall I say... greedy. Also, an author's appearance should (ideally) have no bearing on how we read his/her works.

But, as with other attempts to "prettify" the author (more about those later), the Rice Portrait portrays a young girl who is undoubtedly attractive. The portrait is a stark contrast to the one accepted portrait of Austen in the National Gallery in London, in which she looks a little peeved and well, not that pretty. In a way, the completed Rice Portrait acts like a backwards corrective, proving that Austen was pretty at one point in ther life (pre-spinsterhood?). That begs the question, though, of why, if Austen was such a pretty young woman, she never got married?

More on the larger issue of the history of prettified Austen portraits in another post.