JANE AUSTEN THE UNSEEN PORTRAIT ? MY REVIEW & A CLIP

Jane Austen's only officially recognised image

Have you seen the small sketch of Jane Austen in the National Portrait Gallery in London among the huge paintings on the walls which is the only officially recognised existing  image of her  It is small, not at all grand, and made with love by an amatorial sketcher: Jane's beloved sister, Cassandra. That's not enough for such a great writer and the enormous popularity she has gained nowadays. But there's a new intriguing item in the gallery of possible images of Miss Austen we have collected so far. This might-be  an Austen portrait has been analysed in detail in an original TV programme on BBC 2: Jane Austen The Unseen Portrait?

I'm totally caught in this mistery. This BBC show was so good and well built as a literary/art case to be  scientifically investigated on,  but in a detective-story-like manner,  that it was incredibly gripping though simply a documentary programme. The thorough, passionate work of reasearch/investigation literary scholar Dr Paula Byrne has undertaken from  May 2011 on , after getting this portrait of a "Miss Jane Austin" (mispelt, with an "i" instead of an "e", in a note on its back) as a gift from her husband,  is remarkable and encomiable. Her enthusiasm is contagious.

Dr Paula Byrne's Portrait of a "Miss Jane Austin"

Why is this portrait so important if it comes out to be really of Jane Austen? Not only because it will get an immeasurable value on the market (it was only paid £ 2,000) , but especially because it will revolutionise the view the world has of one of Britain's greatest writers. 

Dr Byrne and BBC Martha Kearney on their quest

As a matter of fact, if it comes out to be real, nothing would change for me, for what it counts. In fact, what first strucks me as a watcher is that THAT might well be  the sharp-tongued, witty, intelligent, self-aware and very matter-of- fact Miss Austen I've always had in my mind: little sweetness, no romance, no cuteness. This could never be enough in a serious investigation, but the emotion the sight provoked in me at first  was close to tears (I know, I know, I'm not Jane-Austen-like at all in that and in many other respects) and it happened before the account of Dr Byrne's investigation started, right at the first glimpse of the portrait on the screen. It might be HER!

At the end of her research Dr Byrne's proposes the case, supported by a number of evidences and clues,  to illustrious Austen experts such as Deirdre Le Faye, Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University and Professor Claudia Johnson of Princeton. They are invited to listen to what Dr Paula Byrne has discovered about the portrait she owns and decide whether it may bear any resemblance to what Jane Austen might have been like. Dr Byrne faces them in great excitement and tries to convince them of the goodness of her own investigating work. Did she succeed in convincing them?

The answer only in the end. First, the main evidences and clues she presents to support her theory:

- forensic tests were carried out on the ink used (constant white) and the vellum which proved it can be dated something between 1811 and 1869 (before the publication of James Edward Austen-Leigh’s Memoir)

- the clothes the lady in the picture wears were recognised by an expert as consistent fashionable clothing in the years between 1813-1815

- the family resemblance , especially the nose, was studied with highly modern techniques used to identify criminals from CCTV footage or photos. The resemblance is stunning, but the computer study supports that mere impression 

- the surname was often mispelt as "Austin" by people who knew Jane in her life: Eliza Chute (whom Dr Byrne is inclined to believe to be the amateur artist who drew this portrait in London), Elizabeth Lee, The Countess of Morley, Mrs Mosley and John Murray, her publisher, on a royalty check. 

There are lots of doubts to be solved and questions to be answered yet,  so this research must undoubtedly go on in order to be proved totally improbable or genuine. But what did the experts consulted by Dr Byrne say in the end? Where they convinced? Did they reject her theory? 

Deirdre Le Faye, Prof. Kathryn Sutherland and Prof. Claudia Johnson

She succeeded in bringing to her side two out of three scholars and she considered that "much more than she could have expected".  Deirdre Le Faye considers it "an imaginary portrait of Jane Austen" and during the presentation she debated most of Dr Byrne's clues. The other two experts, Professor Sutherland and Professor Johnson, were more supportive and , in the end, they agreed that it could possibly be an image of Jane Austen taken during  her life by an amateur artist. 

I'm sure we will hear more about Dr Byrne and her research on this portrait. Meanwhile, I'm totally fascinated by the lady in the picture. 

If you want to judge yourself and  you live in the UK,  see this programme on BBCiPlayer

 Here's a clip from the programme from my Youtube Channel . Enjoy!

THE MANY LOVERS OF MISS JANE AUSTEN - BBC2

Professor Amanda Vickery in Bath

I was so happy I could see this show! The Many Lovers of Miss Jane Austen is a 60-minute programme, broadcast on BBC 2 on December 23rd. In it,   Professor Amanda Vickery, one of the leading chroniclers of Georgian England,  wonders why on earth millions of us are still reading Jane Austen period romances or how  her “genteel fiction” has become a 21st century global phenomenon. Professor Vickery , both as a historian and as an unashamed fan, is fascinated by the story of how an anonymous, minor novelist in her own lifetime, became celebrated today as our very best-loved writer.

This TV show was not the classic documentary dedicated to a National literary treasure, only celebrating and quoting from a writer  as popular as Jane Austen. It was really interesting and focused on Jane’s fame through the centuries   entertaining and  informing at the same time.

Professor Amanda Vickery’s  search for the reasons of Austen’s global popularity starts quite far from Chawton, Hampshire or England. It begins in Fort Worth, Texas, USA where Jane Austen Society of North America  held their annual convention (watch a clip from the programme), the biggest International celebration for an author whose fame ranks second only to Shakespeare. On this occasion, Professor Vickery could show the audience examples of the rampant commercialization of the brand Jane Austen, the astounding phenomenon we know so well here at My Jane Austen Book Club. As Professor Vickery recognises in Texas, it seems possible that…” Jane Austen the commercial brand dances hand in hand with the appreciation of Jane Austen the serious novelist. And it’s this partnership that gives  Austen a unique position in the world of literature”.

Another example of how treasurable everything belonging to Jane Austen has become nowadays is the sale at Sotheby’s in London of the manuscript of the fragment of  “The Watsons”. It was exciting to see the auction in Professor Vickery’s (very surprised ) eyes and to see her so excited at reading some lines from that same manuscript before it went sold to  the Bodleian Library in Oxford  for a stunning £850,000: an amazing achievement for a woman who struggled in genteel poverty. This demonstrates Jane Austen’s academic status today is just as potent as her commercial brand.

Earl Spencer reading Sense and Sensibility

To understand this huge success Professor Vickery then passes to analyze how Jane Austen was read in the different epochs, from her own age up to these days. Who was reading her and why?

The very first people to read Jane Austen were her family, of course. But then, when at last Austen managed to have her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, printed and distributed  (October 1811) who were the 750 people who bought it? Certainly young noble ladies who could fully appreciate Austen’s understatements about her discriminated, bound role in a male-oriented society but also a wider, less refined public thanks to the popular circulating libraries of the time.  Respect to the standards of her own age - for a woman writing -  and respect to the very brief period in which she published her first 4 novels, she may well be considered quite successful.

After 3 years from her death, however, she had fallen out of fashion and out of  print. The main culprit for the neglect her work fell into, is Romanticism and the publishing of passionate novels like those by the Brontes.  Professor Vickery discusses then Charlotte Bronte’s dislike for Austen’s work (“…  the passions are perfectly unknown to her”)  with Lucasta Miller, a Bronte expert and defends Jane Austen’s from the accuses of being … shallow, superficial, prim and in denial of true human nature.

Anyway, by the middle of the 19th century, Austen was back in print and read -  as well as her more modern colleagues, Gaskell, Eliot, Thackeray, Dickens – thanks to a new Victorian invention: trains and railways creative a captive new audience for books, cheap yellowback editions of  novels were sold in WH bookshops at the stations. Jane Austen’s titles had just fallen out of copyright and that’s the reason why they were included in the low-priced popular yellow back series of books. It was the debut of Austen to a mass audience. In 1870, Austen’s relationship with her Victorian readers changed thanks to the authorised account of her life made by her nephew, James Edward Austen – Leigh.

Professor Amanda Vickery on set

The tour  to the places of  Austen myth  goes on, from Chawton to Bath, where the annual Jane Austen Festival is held in September. There, Professor Vickery and Katie Halsey, author of “The History of Reading”,  discuss who the Janeites were when they started as a sophisticated and eye – brow clique of academics and aesthetes. And they insist on the fact that Janeites were men highly appreciating Jane Austen’s work, men like Winston Churchill reading her novels during the war or Rudyard Kipling soon after his own only son’s death, or even soldiers in the terror of the trench warfare (watch a clip about Austen in Trenches from the programme). It seems impossibile but face to face with death each moment of their horrifying monotonous lives in the trenches, soldiers could be taken away and consoled by Jane Austen’s words.

After WWI, humanities and the study of literature got to have a new prestige in the academic world of universities, they seemed essential for the future of mankind. This is when Jane Austen started being studied and appreciated in a new serious way by literary scholars  like the Leavis in Cambridge and immensely loved by a new mass audience that came to her work through the TV and film adaptations.

Austen has been reinvented and ultimately popularised  and her fame is alive thanks to a huge International  community of extremely diverse individuals -  scholars, fans and readers - joined  by their love for Jane Austen and a strong sense of sisterhood. Because, yes, they still are especially women.

The secret of her popularity,  then? The combination,  as a writer,  of academic prestige and popular devotion.

Official page of the programme

If you live in the UK, you can watch this programme on iPlayer

AT HOME WITH JANE AUSTEN - A VIDEO

At Home with the Georgians is an interesting series of programmes about homes in the Georgian Era. I've been watching it on  DVD and have posted my positive reaction briefly on Fly High!
I've also cut and pasted the Austen - related fragments in episode 1 , A Man's Place, in a short videoclip I called "At Home with Jane Austen" . You can watch it on my Utube Channel or here below. I hope you'll enjoy it.

The entire series is definitely worth seeing if you are interested in Jane Austen's World and the 18th century in general. The programmes are brilliantly  presented by Professor Amanda Vickery and are based on her successful book, Behind Closed Doors. The three issues in the DVD are 

1. A Man's Place

2. A Woman's Touch

3. Safe as Houses

Watch the video and enjoy!