Jane Austen: The Portrait

Fri. May 4: The Portrait

The first time I visited London five years ago, one thing I really wanted to do was go to the National Portrait Gallery and see the watercolour and pencil sketch of Jane Austen that's there. I was staying in Oxford at the time so I made day trips into London. When I arrived at the National Portrait Gallery, I looked at the floor plan to figure out where she was, took the escalator up, wandered through the rooms, and was greeted with a sign stating that the 18th century collection was currently touring America. Damn colony, always stirring up trouble.

Today, then, I went to the National Gallery and took a guided tour, and afterwards popped around the corner (of Trafalgar Square!) to see Jane Austen. I was on a mission and tried not to get distracted by the portraits of other familiar names (Samuel Johnson! Robert Adam! Addison! Steele!). Ironically, in my purposeful search through the gallery, I actually missed the portrait the first time through.


It's small. I've seen reproductions of the portrait, of course, but the actual sketch is the size of a small postcard and it's placed in an oval frame, making it even smaller. The portrait is mounted under glass in its own display case rather than on the wall (which is why I missed it). It is rather out of place amidst much bigger portraits of other artists like John Keats and Samuel Coleridge (yes, it is housed in the Romantics room even though Austen was not a Romantic; no, don't get me started). And rather than being painted by a professional portrait painter, Austen's portrait (a sketch, really) was painted by an amateur, her sister Cassandra.

What struck me the most about the painting, which I had never quite noticed before, is how she's holding herself, or rather, how she's not. She seems to be leaning back in the chair a little bit, slumped, with her arms crossed in resignation. As a pose, it's rather... modern. Unrefined. Certainly informal, unlike all the other portraits in the surrounding galleries. Fast forward a century and one imagines that the pose would fit into the Bloomsbury group or Dorothy Parker's circle—all she's missing is a cigarette in one hand.

Do I think that's what she looked like? I think it's a partial likeness. What I like about this portrait, though, which all the subsequent "improvements" erase, is the sense of character and personality that comes through in her expression and body language. The woman in the portrait is a little wary of the world, is literally observing it askance. That pleases me very much.

Posted: late Friday, May 4, when I should be sleeping.