The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen

executed by Ozias Humphry R.A in 1788

A fascinating portrait, its provenance and history...

Only one of the five miniatures of women we examined had any identification at all. The eldest Motley-Austen daughter, Jane, who married William Campion of Danny, had a slip of paper inserted in the reverse of the miniature, which read, ‘Jane Austen, who married William Campion’. The other three women and the child had no identification on them, or in them, only the date, 1802, on one unused by Le Faye. In the child’s case, a piece of paper in the reverse gave W.S Lethbridge’s name, and an address in the Strand, which was not his studio (although he did work from the Strand). Miss Le Faye states that all these miniatures are by Lethbridge. We could find no evidence for this, no signature of any artist and no dates.

Miss Le Faye claims that Mrs Motley-Austen ‘Mary Anne’s grandmother was so disappointed with ‘Lethbridge’s miniature of her granddaughter that she employed the Rev. Matthew William Peters to ‘pretty her up’ in a large painting in oils, e.g. The Rice portrait. ‘Mary Anne’ does have an unfortunate receding chin, but neither in the many descriptions of Jane Austen, or in Cassandra’s sketch of her in the NPG, does this defect become apparent. The Rev. Peters was chiefly a pastellist (see Neil Jaffares, Dictionary of pastellists before 1800). He was also known for his somewhat risqué paintings of young women, and resigned from the Royal Academy in 1790, officially painting only ‘religious and historical paintings’ after this date. Surely an odd choice for a loving grandmother to paint her young granddaughter? Peters died in 1814, having officially given up painting in 1800.

Miss Le Faye suggests that Colonel Thomas Austen gave away a portrait of his niece ‘Mary Anne Campion’ to two people who would not have known the difference, and that Colonel Thomas whose great friend was Edward Austen Knight (see previous provenance), himself may have believed it to be Jane Austen, his second cousin. This suggestion is risible (see professor Claudia Johnson’s short article on the website.) His friend Col Harding Newman is said to have proposed to Jane, and his bride Elizabeth Hall also knew the family. Miss Le Faye asserts that Sir Henry Hake, the director of the NPG in the 1930s held the opinion that ‘the Rice portrait’ was not Jane Austen. This is incorrect; he tried to buy it from the Rice family. (See letters on website). Ozias Humphry was not just ‘an artist working in Kent in the 1780s’. He was a favoured artist of the Duke of Dorset, the local grandee, and his brother; William Humphry was Rector of Seal, and the Duke’s chaplain. They were a close family, and William procured his brother Ozias many commissions. In the spring of 1788 Ozias returned from India and went down to Kent, where he was first of all kept busy by the Duke, and then by Francis Austen. Also, he painted other miniatures of the Austen family, which we are also putting on this website, (See pages on Ozias Humphry and his works, signature and life.) The two portraits, Jane and Cassandra were hung at Kippington. The same Mrs Harrison, who owned the miniatures, owned another oil painting of ‘a young woman in a white dress’ which she wrote to Chapman about in 1952. The letter referring to this is reproduced below; it never seems to have occurred to anyone that it could have been Cassandra. Mrs Harrison was only enquiring if it could have been Jane. We spoke to Mrs Harrison’s nephew who had stayed with her in France as a child; he remembered the portrait vaguely, saying only that the girl was older than ours of Jane, and that it was not always hung as Mrs Harrison had so many paintings. Finally, Miss Le Faye says that Colonel Thomas Austen, an honourable and upright soldier under Wellington, Governor of the Algarve in the Peninsula Wars, Aide Principale to the Viceroy of Ireland, Lord Whitworth, and at one point both an MP and a JP, actually took Miss Le Faye’s view – I quote, ‘he might have taken the proverbial view that ‘a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind horse.’ In that he then gave away the portrait of his niece to Mrs Harding Newman ‘secure in the knowledge she would never know the difference’! Even if she did not, surely his own sister, Jane Campion, her mother, would have noticed! Miss Le Faye has been believed because of all the work she has done on Austen research in the past, I feel that our picture’s many champions will be pleased that the “Mary Anne Campion” attribution is now finally eliminated.