The arguments surrounding the dating of the dress of the girl in the Rice Portrait have been rumbling on for years and remain the main reason given by the National Portrait Gallery for refusing to accept it is a portrait of Jane Austen.

As far back in 1941 C K Adams of the National Portrait Gallery said: "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."

Where C K Adams searched we do not know but it is worth remembering that this was at the height of the Second World War in an era pre-internet, pre-television and pre-mass communication.

More recently, in 1995, Professor Aileen Ribeiro of the Courtauld Institute said that the Rice Portrait "cannot be earlier than c1800 and therefore cannot be Austen as a young girl." She was not always so certain, as she acknowledged - "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."

These days searching for pictures is easy and a search on "Pinterest" shows pages of portraits of children in white muslin dresses.

I am not a fashion expert. But to my untrained eye, many of the dresses in portraits dated before 1800 share common features with the dress of the girl in the Rice Portrait including puffed sleeves, narrow ribbons and high waists.