Rare portrait of Jane Austen to visit Holburne
A rare Jane Austen portrait is being loaned to Bath’s Holburne Museum for a short run from August 26 to September 27.
A resident of Bath between 1801 and 1806, the novelist (1775-1817) lived across the road from the Holburne at 4 Sydney Place from 1801 until 1804. During this time, she frequently visited Sydney Gardens and attended the public breakfasts and evening galas.
The sketch by her sister Cassandra, being loaned by the National Portrait Gallery in London, is the only surviving memento of Austen’s features and the sole widely accepted depiction of her appearance. Although the drawing is undated and unrecorded in the correspondence between the sisters, the sitter’s age and attire suggest a date of around 1810.
As the Austen’s reputation grew after her death, the lack of a reliable portrait became increasingly challenging. In the late 19th century this sketch was turned into an engraving that, according to Austen’s niece Caroline, depicted a ‘pleasing countenance,’ ‘though the general resemblance is not strong.’
The portrait will be in Bath at the same time as the annual, hugely popular Jane Austen Festival which runs from September 10 to 19.
Curator Monserrat Pis Marcos said: “We are delighted to show this fragile and iconic portrait of one of the most important figures in English literature, and one of Bath’s most famous residents, at the Holburne - a building she knew and mentioned in her correspondence.
“We very much hope Miss Austen will enjoy her summer sojourn in our Georgian galleries.”
Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne, said: “Jane Austen is part of the Holburne’s history. The museum is housed in the old entrance to the Sydney Pleasure Gardens where Austen liked to take breakfast and to enjoy fireworks and concerts while she lived across the road. I am delighted to bring her portrait back to the place she seems to have enjoyed more than any other in Bath, and I am deeply grateful to our friends at the National Portrait Gallery for making this homecoming possible.”
The museum will also exhibit portraits by Dante Gabriel Rossetti from September 24 to January 9 and a display of a display of photographs by Sunil Gupta from September 18 to January 19 that explore the legacy of the Pre-raphaelites and their influence on contemporary art.
Exhibition curator Sylvie Broussine said: “We’re thrilled to be able to share with the public this fresh look at one of the leading figures of 19th-century British art.
“Though a lesser-known aspect of his body of work, nonetheless portraiture is present throughout Rossetti’s career.”
Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne Museum, said: “I am proud and delighted to be showing at the Holburne such an important and courageous body of work as Sunil Gupta’s The New Pre-raphaelites.
“We seek always to draw out the contemporary resonances of our historic exhibits and that could not be more powerfully represented than in this body of work in which Gupta uses Victorian pictorial compositions in order to raise marginalised and criminalised samesex relationships to the highest level of romantic love.”