Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait?

It may have been an age before photography,

but we know what most of the great Britons of the past look like.

Their images here at the National Portrait Gallery in London

still shape how we regard them today.

The 18th and early 19th century was a golden age for British portraiture

and it wasn't just these grandees who sought

immortality through art, but people further down the social scale.

One of the greatest Britons of the period remains tantalisingly out of reach.

This is the only authenticated image of Jane Austen which is known

to exist, so amongst all these grand paintings, there's only this tiny sketch

by her sister Cassandra which is a rough little scribble, really.

Even people in her own family didn't think it was a good likeness.

So what did Jane Austen,

one of the most famous authors of all time, really look like?

And why are we so desperate to know?

People long to find portraits of writers they admire.

We all long to find them and the longing to have one,

the longing to feel, here she is at last is very understandable.

Jane Austen is a figure in whom we invest so many different ideas

and fantasies about England, about class, about desire,

about sisterhood and I think, on one hand,

we want to see her everywhere - bumper stickers, mugs, book bags.

At the same time, seeing her makes us a little uncomfortable.

Now a small portrait has come to light which its owner believes

is a true likeness of Jane Austen.

If it can be authenticated, and, let's face it, that is a huge if,

the picture itself would be worth a fortune

but it would also give us insight to the society in which

Jane Austen lived and completely overturn our idea of the novelist.

For so long, she has been glossed as dear Aunt Jane, living a quiet,

genteel retirement here at Chawton Cottage in Hampshire.

The cosy public image of dear Aunt Jane might just be about to change.

Could this be the first time the world has seen the true face of Jane Austen?

If it is the author, what could this picture tell us

about the world that she inhabited?

If it isn't, who might this poised, self-confident woman writer be?

I went to meet the woman who's determined to find out -

literary scholar Dr Paula Byrne is researching a biography of Austen.

In May 2011, she first set eyes on a picture which she believes

could revolutionise our view of one of Britain's greatest writers.

I looked at the face

and I had this moment of recognition that this could be Jane Austen.

It is completely different from my idea of what Jane Austen would have looked like.

Really? In what respect? Can you...?

I have a much more cutesy idea of her, somehow.

What did you think when you first saw it?

When I first saw it,

I had a deep intake of breath. "Gosh, that really looks like her brothers."

If Paula's right,

her portrait would be one of the literary revelations of the century,

as it captures the sitter in the act of writing.

Some of the details seem to point in the right direction.

The architecture in the background could be appropriate to Austen -

she came from a church family.

On the table sits a cat - often associated with spinsterhood. Austen never married.

And at least at some point,

someone has believed this to be Jane Austen as her name is on the frame.

There is a date of death here, "Born 1775, died 1817."

Doesn't that mean that the picture can't possibly have been painted in her lifetime?

Well, of course, the frame could be later.

That didn't worry me too much at all.

What do we actually know about what she really looked like?

This is Anna Lefroy, Jane Austen's beloved niece.

"The figure, tall and slender, not drooping, fine,

"naturally-curling hair and the rather small, but well-shaped nose."

A small nose. I wouldn't call that a "small" nose.

That is something we need to debate.

I don't have any idea what people thought in the 18th century

was a small nose, but I can tell you that Jane Austen's mother had

a large aristocratic, beaky nose.

What I thought was so compelling was that, if this was

painted in her lifetime, that would be an extraordinary thing to see.

So extraordinary. It's going to be very hard to prove, isn't it?

The picture had featured in a Bonham's auction where it was described

as an "imaginary" portrait of the novelist.

That is one not drawn from life.

It was coming up to our 15th wedding anniversary...

'Paula's husband. Prof Jonathan Bate. Shakespearian scholar

'and provost of Worcester College Oxford

'bought the portrait for her as an anniversary present.

'Because it had been dismissed as "imaginary",

'he was able to pick it up for £2,000.'

The thing that struck me most is that this is clearly a picture of a writer.

If is was a single sheet of paper there,

it could have been any woman of the regency period writing a letter,

but it's not a single sheet of paper.

It's a sheath of papers and you can actually see,

if you get in close, a line of words written on it.

Not quite close enough to say, "It is a truth universally acknowledged..."

-That would be very handy.

-That would have been handy.

It's just beginning to dawn on me how potentially significant

Paula's theory could be.

We are all of us, consciously or not,

influenced by the dust-jacket picture of an author

so just compare this, the prettified Victorian image based on

the original sketch by Cassandra, and then this far stronger image.

There's potentially a lot at stake here.

The Victorian image of Jane Austen was commissioned by her family

from the artist James Andrews.

It reflects their desire to stress her ladylike respectability.

But is Paula really any more objective?

Do we all project onto Austen the kind of woman we want to see?

The family portrait that went out in 1870 was the first time

that the public had ever seen Jane Austen.

That made her look very pretty, prim and, let's face it, quite dim.

That had a huge legacy on Jane Austen and her work.

My portrait presents a very different sort of Jane Austen.

It presents an image of a professional woman writer.

She seems very comfortable in her own skin. She's taking on the world.

But Paula faces an uphill struggle if she's to convince the world

that her portrait is the true face of Jane Austen.

She'll first have to establish that it isn't a fake

and that it dates from Austen's lifetime -

she died in 1817.

You haven't given me too much to work with, I'm afraid.

Can we go in quite close on her face?

She will have to get to grips with each of the mysterious clues

the portrait seems to contain.

I think we can safely say that's not the building.

We have to find out where it is.

Then she'll have to give a convincing account of

how her picture was produced and who the artist might have been.

And she'll have to square all of that with what we know about Austen herself.

A writer about whom surprisingly little is known for certain.

Could a portrait of Jane have survived without the Austen family acknowledging its existence?

I really do think it would be extraordinary

if she'd had her portrait painted and her brother and sister were alive

and they adored her and she became...

The publisher wanted a picture of her and they said

"There isn't a picture of her." Why should they have done that?

Why should they have concealed a picture of her?

Finally, Paula plans to present her findings

to three of the world's authorities on Austen.

Can she convince them that this

radically different vision of the novelist is really her?

What do you think Paula Byrne's chances are of getting her picture authenticated?

Nil. N-I-L. Nil.

Amidst all the countless images here among the stacks of the National Portrait Gallery,

there is a box which could be pretty worrying for Paula.

Inside here, there are lots of images which are all supposed to be of Jane Austen,

but have been rejected by the gallery as inauthentic.

Paula's got quite a mountain to climb.

The first thing Paula has to establish

is whether her picture is an out-and-out fake.

Dr Nick Eastaugh is a world leader in the scientific testing of artworks.

If he's spots something fishy,

Paula's theory that her picture shows Jane Austen

and was done in her lifetime will be dead in the water.

We know it's on vellum. We know it's wash with chalk

and picked out in ink

or pencil.

Vellum might have been used at any time,

but some of the materials that have been applied

is what I think we'll focus on.

The little touches of white and so on.

There are a number of things that were

introduced in the 19th century that we'd be looking for specifically.

Things like zinc white that came in in the middle of that century.

We'll have to see what we see.

Over the coming week,

Dr Eastaugh will subject the portrait to a series of forensic tests.

Gosh, it's out.

Before he begins,

the back of the portrait yields a potentially significant clue.

-Goodness me.

-This is the moment I think you've been waiting for.

This is the moment I've been waiting for.

Here, we have "Miss Jane Austin" and the Austin is spelt with an "I".

Which is a misspelling which throws up a set of quite interesting questions.

Would a faker make such an elementary blunder?

Could someone who knew this to be Jane Austen

conceivably misspell her name in this way?

Or could the inscription simply mean

this was a completely different woman

who really did spell her name with an I.

During the course of her quest,

Paula must find an answer to these questions.

There's another thing that's been troubling me.

If Paula's portrait really could be Jane Austen, it would be highly valuable.

So how is her husband able to buy it for £2,000?

While Paula waited for the test results,

I tracked down the man who sold it,

manuscripts dealer Roy Davids.

So, how did you come across this painting?

I bought it for £50 in 1982

and I wrote to the owner

and asked, did she know anything about the background of it?

And she wrote to me - there's the letter -

"Alas, I have absolutely no background information about it

"and do not think that any papers or files will produce any."

And so, Anna...

Anna de Goguel.

So provenance was a dead end, as far as I was concerned.

So what did you then go about doing

to try and see if the picture was genuine?

Over the years, I did little bits and pieces at it.

Roy's attempts to authenticate the portrait soon hit an implacable obstacle.

It's just not her.

It's just somebody's idea of what they hoped she might have looked like.

Leading Austen expert Deirdre le Faye dismissed the picture

as an imaginary image done by somebody who'd never set eyes on Jane Austen.

So when I came to sell it,

I felt obliged to take notice of what she had said.

She is a recognised name in the field

and I felt that I had to give her full dues.

I think it would be worth somewhere between 100,000 and a million,

if you could prove it.

But unless there is an absolute proof that this is Jane Austen,

it's not worth 100,000 and it's not worth a million.

I headed straight to Portishead in Somerset

to meet the woman who dismissed the portrait in no uncertain terms.

Paula's quest really could cause quite a stir.

Jane Austen inspires an extraordinary devotion amongst her fans

and the experts who study her, known collectively as the Janeites.

The doyen of them all

and a woman with a formidable reputation is Deirdre Le Faye,

the editor of Jane's letters and keeper of the Austen flame.

How certain are you that the portrait we're discussing

isn't genuine? Are you at all open to persuasion on this?

No.

Flat no.

I'm sorry for whoever may have bought it now

but no, there are too many things wrong with it.

It's purely symbolic.

It doesn't in any way resemble the family portraits.

It stems from, in my opinion,

brother Henry's original memoir of Jane Austen,

which was published in 1818.

'Henry Austen's description is tantalisingly vague.'

He says his sister was "exceeding the middle height"

that her complexion was of "the finest texture"

and that her features were "separately good."

What I think happened

was that someone read brother Henry's description

and thought, "Ah, what a nice lady she must have been. I will draw my idea of her."

You know, like that. That happened 80-90 years later

but that is somebody's idea of what they thought Jane Austen looked like,

which I prefer, which is why I bought it.

I think he's done it very nicely.

Jane and Cassandra never married

so there was never any reason for them to have marriage miniatures done,

never reason to have family portraits done.

No reason for great big portraits to hang in a small

and rather damp parsonage, as it was.

Deirdre raises an important question

about Jane Austen's place and status in her family.

How likely is it that a woman like Austen -

the spinster daughter of a rural clergyman -

would have sat for a portrait in the first place?

Every regency portrait tells a story

about how the sitter themselves wanted to be portrayed,

the relationship between the artist and their subject and social status.

We're all very familiar with those grand oil paintings of aristocrats in their palaces

but what about the class below that?

The world of the gentry, which Jane Austen herself inhabited.

A gentry family would be conscious of its history.

The aristocracy inherit land and titles and they're great ones for celebrating their dynasties.

The gentry inherit land but not titles

so commemorating members of the family

and passing down portraits would have been important to them.

But there's a great range of wealth within that class, that social rank.

Austen's particular branch of the family wasn't very wealthy.

Her father was a vicar.

But in the wealthier branches of the family, there were grander portraits,

commissioned portraits being done during Jane Austen's lifetime.

So, she would have been aware of other family members having portraits taken.

You're seeing the democratisation of the portrait, aren't you?

There are far more painters and painters move around the country.

You wouldn't think somebody as grand as Joshua Reynolds

started painting the local gentry and going around.

There are a huge proliferation of portraits around that period.

And then it reaches the inevitable crescendo - they invent photography.

Regency portraits were so much more than status badges

and portrait miniatures held a special place in British gentry men's and women's hearts.

They were treasured possessions.

Intimate and often startlingly lifelike keys to understanding

and remembering who the sitter truly was.

To sit for a top, leading London portrait miniaturist would be 30 guineas.

Of course, to sit for an oil painting

with a top oil painter would be 300 guineas.

So, this is a major expense.

That's why portraits are done for specific reasons -

to celebrate children, for engagements, marriages, to go abroad.

They're often in miniature because it could then be worn on the body by a loved one.

The obvious analogy that come to mind

is the photo on your phone.

We all like to share images of new babies,

of somebody's new fiance, someone who's abroad who we may not have seen for a while.

So could the fact that there's no known portrait of Jane Austen in her lifetime,

other than Cassandra's sketch,

simply mean her family didn't think she was important enough to sit for one?

Paula and I went to Chawton, where Jane and Cassandra lived,

to see what we could find out about portraiture and the Austens.

So, we've got family members here.

We've got Rev George Austen, who is Dad, in the middle there.

Then, to the left, James Austen, who was the eldest in the family.

Francis Austen, who was between Cassandra and Jane in age.

And then Charles, in fact, was the youngest.

Are these definitely pictures from the Austen family?

Yes. They've come down through the family and so...

And we can trace the provenance so...authentic pictures.

And why did pictures exist of the men in the family but not of Jane?

I'm not sure we really know that.

I mean, obviously, Charles and Francis has illustrious careers

but yes, it is a bit of a puzzle, really.

But then things have appeared or disappeared through the centuries.

Perhaps you could help us with our puzzle. Paula, do you want to...?

-Yes, I'd like to show you this...

-OK. Right.

-..drawing on vellum

of this young lady.

My goodness, that's interesting, isn't it? Yeah.

You can definitely trace a likeness there, can't you?

It is quite good, isn't it?

That is quite intriguing, I must admit.

It's that nose, really, and the mouth,

which I always think of as very distinguishing features of the Austens.

-Oh, right, so who's this?

-This is Edward, Lucky Edward,

who's the one who was adopted by the rich Knight family.

I wonder if I could bring my colleague in actually. Ann?

Can I show you this portrait?

Well...

And your reaction?

Right, my reaction... Well, it's wonderful.

The long neck, which is in the portrait by Cassandra.

But also the nose and eyebrow plateau is very alike.

-It's familiar.

-It's familiar, yeah. Very familiar.

Does it matter if we know what she looks like?

For no other reason than every other authoress

before and after has probably got a portrait and Jane hasn't.

She is so important.

We wouldn't all be reading the books we're reading without this woman.

Any of them. So it would be nice to put the box to the face.

-I think I'll have a scone.

-Go for it.

If the woman in the picture does turn out to be Jane Austen,

how would that change our view of her?

It's quite a severe, strong face, isn't it?

It's EXACTLY the view of Jane Austen that I have,

which I think is very different to, perhaps, the view of cosy,

demure spinster Jane

who'll just occasionally write a few things here and there.

-As a sideline?

-As a sideline and just to keep the family amused.

When I look at that face, I see that feisty, professional woman

who doesn't write twee little novels. A sort of frocks and smocks.

-It's slightly patronising.

-It's very patronising. And it makes me cross

because that's not the Jane Austen that I know and love.

But it was clear to me,

looking out from the Cassandra's Cup cafe in Chawton,

that if Paula was ever to upturn the heritage version of Jane Austen,

she's going to need a lot more than a hunch about family resemblance.

Could we be more objective about similarities between Paula's portrait

and the reliably attested ones of Jane's brothers?

Frank, James, Charles, Edward and her clergyman father George.

The recent riots might present a very different vision of life from the one in Austen's novels

but could the techniques used to identify the looters from scenes of CCTV footage have a bearing here?

David Anley specialises in forensic facial recognition techniques in criminal cases.

He agreed to apply those techniques to Paula's picture

and to those of the Austen family from Chawton Cottage.

If we were in a court of law, which is your normal job,

what would you say in answer to the question,

"Could the woman in the picture be related to the Jane Austen family?"

I've cropped all the images of all the subjects

and put together an arrangement of the noses here.

-Wow!

-And you can see that,

considering we're looking at six different subjects,

I would say that the artists have portrayed the noses

in a strikingly similar manner.

Looking at the rest of the face,

do you see similarities there or differences?

There is a similar broad similarity in, for example,

the shape of the eyes.

-Oh gosh.

-Overall.

-Goodness me.

But it has to be said that Jane's eyes are not symmetrical,

which is not really the case with any of the others.

I suppose the overall question is

is there a feature that might be described as a family trait

which is in some way striking and shared by all of them?

And I think the answer is yes, there is - the nose is strikingly similar.

Nor do I find amongst the other features

anything sufficiently varied in its appearance

as to suggest the lack of any familial connections.

So, Paula, what do you draw from this?

Well, I think if I were to believe Deirdre Le Faye that it's an imaginary portrait,

how could somebody have a nose

like every other member of the family

if it was just from the imagination?

It strikes me as rather sad that the family didn't think

she was sufficiently important enough

to merit her own miniature, her own portrait.

These were the brothers, they were the important ones.

But they weren't the important members of the family. SHE was.

Dr Eastaugh has now completed his analysis of Paula's portrait.

I feel really nervous about this trip back.

It's almost as if I've had sleepless nights.

I'm really worried about the zinc white.

That's the thing that I'm anxious about

because he mentioned this thing about zinc white

being something that was used in the later part of the 19th century.

For the portrait to be Jane Austen,

Paula needs to prove that it was done in the writer's lifetime,

and the presence of zinc white would make that impossible.

Austen's novels weren't published under her name until 1818, a year after her death.

And she wasn't well known to the general public until 1897,

when her nephew's memoir was published, illustrated by the Andrews portrait.

So if Paula's portrait predates 1870,

that makes it less likely to have been cooked up later by a fan.

The really key stuff from your perspective is from the material analysis.

Is it zinc white, do we know?

It's not zinc white, that's the key thing.

There was another pigment they used earlier in the 19th century, which is barium sulphate.

It had various names.

One of the more common ones was constant white,

and this is what you've got here.

You have the barium sulphate white pigment.

Goodness me! This is, just to clarify, the white bits we can see on the lace and on the headband.

That's correct.

Do we have a date for that?

Yes, that's absolutely key.

So this is an early mention from 1811 of constant white.

This is 1869.

Constant white is nearly out of use.

1869. Oh, my goodness me.

Chinese or zinc white having almost superseded it.

So we've given you a time frame for this.

Oh, my gosh, that is so exciting.

So the white pigment used on the portrait suggests a dating of between 1811 and 1869.

But what about the "Miss Jane Austin" on the back?

Could it have been added at a later date?

What we do know is the inscription appears to be one of the earlier sorts of ink,

so we know it's got a bit of iron in it,

and these iron tannate inks would be what you would expect in the first part of the 19th century.

There's another way of checking whether a picture is fake,

and that's through the fashion of the time.

The historical accuracy of what the sitter is wearing can give the game away.

Hilary Davidson is an expert on dress in the regency period.

Oh, wow.

Wow!

It's the right date.

It's definitely within her lifetime.

There's a high waist here.

By the end of the 1810s, the waist starts dropping again to become the low waist of the 1820s.

The detail of the sleeve head here is very much of its period.

There is one piece of clothing which has very strong provenance as having belonged to Jane Austen.

It's dated to about 1812 or '14.

I've taken a pattern from it and really looked at Jane's figure type.

The sleeve head and the way it's pleated here

-is very, very similar to this garment that has a strong connection with Jane.

-Really?

But did people really just change fashion so quickly?

I mean, wouldn't they have hung on to clothes maybe ten years after they were in the height of fashion?

Not so far as ten years. There is a slight lag,

and Jane herself is known to have been very punctilious about her clothing.

She liked clothing. She kept herself neat and sort of up-to-date.

She wasn't fashionable but she certainly wasn't out of fashion.

She's wearing a cap, which Jane was known to do.

She commented in one of her letters that it saves on hairdressing,

so everything about this ensemble bespeaks what we know of Jane's social milieu and her personal taste.

It's absolutely right for an older woman of the middle class, in the middle of the 1810s.

Some of the physical descriptions that we have of her suggest that she was very slender and tall.

Are there any clues at all that that is a tall, thin, slender woman?

I think there is.

Where I would put that is in the proportion between the shoulders and the head.

She's got very narrow shoulders,

and the head is quite large in relation to the breadth of the shoulders there,

and this tallies with what can be gleaned from the Hampshire pelisse coat.

So it's an outer garment that's made of silk.

Taking the measurements from that,

you get a woman who is very tall and slender for her time.

If the average height of a woman was about 5'5",

which we can determine from skeletal records,

it looks like Jane could've been as tall as 5'8".

But not only that, she was very slender.

If the measurements from the pelisse coat are right,

she was skinnier than Kate Moss.

Would it be possible for somebody who was making a fake picture

to look back at the fashion of the times and think,

"Right, I'm going to put this picture

"within Jane Austen's lifetime

"and just make sure I get the fashion details correct"?

It's very, very, very difficult to do.

It's far harder to fake a dress than it is to fake a picture,

but nothing about this portrait reads as wrong to me.

This is absolutely 1814, 1816, based on the dress.

But if the case for Paula's portrait

being done in Austen's lifetime is building,

its provenance - that's the story of how it came down to us -

looks to be a dead end.

Until Anna de Goguel's son gives Paula and unexpected lead.

-Does it ring any bells?

-Not at all.

-Do you know that it belonged to your mother at one point?

-No, I didn't.

Your mother did sell it to a man called Roy Davids,

who's had it for 30 years.

And he had this letter from your mother.

Oh, well, this explains everything.

What can you tell us?

She was executrix of an estate of a man called John Foster.

John Foster was an extraordinary figure.

He was an international lawyer, he was a QC,

he was a human-rights lawyer,

a member of parliament for about 30 years.

-Gosh.

-He died in January or February of '82,

so this must be his estate.

That was his address, his chambers in The Temple.

Goodness me.

-So I think she was disposing of his estate.

-Really?

So that's why I've never seen the picture.

Well, that's a mystery solved.

Paula has succeeded in tracing the history of her picture

back to the early 1980s, to Sir John Foster,

who was Conservative MP for Northwich in Cheshire.

But with him, for the time being at least,

the trail goes cold.

Perhaps someone watching this programme knows more.

There's no paper trail

linking Paula's portrait to Jane Austen

and the story of how it came to light remains murky at best.

But Paula has at least established

that it depicts a woman writing in around 1812 to 1815.

What she needs to do now is to enlist the help of art historians,

to try to understand the circumstances

in which her portrait might have been produced.

-What is it?

-It's a drawing.

-Is it a miniature?

-It's not a miniature,

it's a portrait drawing.

Date-wise it's somewhere between 1805 and 1815.

-OK.

-I mean, honestly, I'd put these on for 15th-century manuscripts,

but for an amateur, crummy...

Regency piece of nothing...

I mean, come on, this is ridiculous.

Paula's portrait uses a technique called plumbago,

which involves delicate lead pencil marks on vellum,

that is, abortive calfskin.

Artist Susan Monk still works in the medium.

I'm quite impressed with the buildings in the background.

I'd say that someone's maybe

a little bit more interested in the buildings

than they were in the portrait.

It gives it a slightly historical feel, doesn't it?

Quite flattering, which I don't mind at all, I can tell you!

But the use of vellum in Paula's portrait

perplexes the art historians.

Vellum goes out of fashion, really, as a support,

really, in the early 18th century.

I mean, 99.9% of portrait drawings of this date,

the early 19th century, would be drawn on paper.

So this might be deliberately old-fashioned.

And the plumbago technique itself proves every bit as puzzling.

I'm not quite sure what you'd call it,

because technically, lead on vellum, you would usually think,

"That equals a plumbago", but not from this period.

The plumbago portrait...

Gosh, by about 1720 they were completely out of fashion.

That is your typical plumbago miniature.

That's why yours is so unusual,

because it's 100 years out of fashion.

And the composition of the image raises further questions.

It's giving her a kind of grandeur, isn't it?

Which is beyond the world of...

More belongs to the world of Catherine de Bourgh.

From Pride And Prejudice.

Tassels and cathedrals in the background.

The column and the curtain behind

are very much part of a standard tradition in portraiture

going back to Van Dyke in the early 17th century.

You can see the drapery and the column.

In some ways you have the basics of the composition of your drawing.

But it's the execution of some of the details in the portrait

which gives Paula a lead as to the kind of artist she should be looking for.

Her arm is very, very long.

Somebody with artistic training in an academy

probably wouldn't make those sort of mistakes

because it's absolutely drummed in.

Always a telltale sign with amateur artists

is that the head doesn't really fit onto the body particularly well.

That cat's quite weakly done. It's a very charming detail.

It doesn't sit on the table particularly happily.

But if it is an amateur artist,

he or she has certainly received lessons from a professional artist.

It feels as though she knows the artist particularly well

so it could be a friend or a member of the family.

Almost as if the artist has walked into the room

and, "We've got nothing to do this morning

"and I've got this bit of vellum.

"You carry on with your writing and I'll sketch you while you do that."

I would doubt whether it was the work of a professional painter.

There was a huge proliferation of portraiture in that period

and you get the emergence of the lady watercolourist

and the lady who does...

Cassandra was already sketching by the mid-Victorian period.

They're all sitting there in droves, painting flowers like no tomorrow.

It's very, very difficult work of art to pigeonhole, actually.

I can't tell you how few miniatures on vellum,

let alone in a sort of plumbago-style technique,

I've seen from around 1815.

There's something almost a bit obsessive about this drawing.

It's so heavily stippled and so heavily worked.

There's a grandeur implied with the column and the velvet curtain

which are totally at odds with the very domestic sleeping cat.

What is significant are the buildings in the background.

If you can pin those down... That's clearly significant to the sitter.

You can see a little of this.

The clues may point to Paula's portrait being drawn by a moderately talented amateur

but there are still many questions.

It's a baffling mix of the intimate and the formal,

the domestic and the grand, the clumsy and the accomplished.

But then Paula makes a breakthrough

which will send her research in a radically new direction.

Can we go in quite close to the building?

It's the gothic architecture in the background

that provides the crucial clue.

Here we have got the northern end

of the north tower of the abbey itself.

And peeping out behind it - it's pretty accurate -

-is St Margaret's.

-It really is.

and in spite of the scaffolding on the top

you can see the distinctive wood on the top.

There is the square belfry window, there's the clock underneath

and the two little windows below that.

It's representing St Margaret's and the edge of Westminster Abbey.

-This is evidently...

-Are you SURE that that is what we're looking at here?

Oh, the identification is 100% certain.

The fact that Paula's portrait depicts Westminster Abbey

and St Margaret's Church

doesn't prove the sitter sat in front of a window with this particular view behind her.

Typically, the view would be added later,

with the sitter not necessarily even present.

Would you say it's more specific than a generalised "Oh, she's from a clerical family"?

Oh, I'm sure it's specific, yes.

It connect her with this particular building.

One of these two buildings.

Buildings in Regency portraits are rarely plonked in at random,

and almost always have a meaning for either the artist or the sitter.

If the painter was trying to make a connection with the literary figures in the abbey,

he would have taken something different.

The most prominent thing here is St Margaret's.

But what does that London setting mean for Paula's theory?

We think of Jane Austen spending her days in a Hampshire cottage

but, in fact, in the years 1813-'15 -

the period to which the costume dates the sitter -

she did spend time in London, staying with her brother Henry.

This is where Jane Austen stayed. We're in the heart of the West End.

It's a thriving, bustling place, there's theatres around.

It does feel a million miles away from Chawton.

There's a lovely letter where Jane Austen is back in London in May 1813,

where she's been visiting a big painting exhibition.

She's driving around in her brother's open carriage and says,

"I liked my solitary elegance very much and was ready to laugh all the time

"at my being where I was - parading about London in a barouche."

Time spent in the capital notwithstanding,

is it really plausible that a supposedly domestic Hampshire auntie

would have chosen to be depicted in front of grand ecclesiastical buildings in central London?

Jane Austen was far from being the only woman writing in Regency Britain.

How were other women authors painted at the time?

Oh, my goodness!

Well, I never.

I don't know what to make of it.

She's depicted in the way that...

a number of other women are depicted

and that is in that act of inspiration.

So, she is writing like the Hannah More painting

but she's also looking. She's in thought.

Usually, the aim was to show the writer in the pose of inspiration.

You know, thinking.

Sometimes with their own book that they might have casually...

"I'm just half-thinking, half-discursing,

"and I'll just flick at my book for a moment."

Or, if you're a very successful author,

you've got your pile of books and look there like that.

Writing, in the early 18th century,

had been very much a disreputable activity for women to engage in.

There's an association between writing for money

and selling yourself.

But round about the second half of the 18th century

it became respectable,

it became something that a proper woman would do.

It didn't bring scandal to her.

But the novel always attracted a kind of condescension

or sometimes a moral panic.

Looking at Jane Austen herself, do you think

she would have wanted to have been portrayed as a writer in this way?

Hmm, it's a tricky question.

When she was writing it at Chawton,

she would put her papers away if any stranger came in.

She was quite happy for her family members to know she was writing

but if somebody knocked on the door that she didn't know, she would hide the paper.

Do you think it would have been out of character for Jane Austen

to have a portrait done?

No, I do not. I do not at all.

She was a bold, amusing, lively, fun-loving person

and I can't see any reason why

she would withdraw from view.

I think she was very proud of her status as the author

and very proud of being a novelist.

Most of Austen's letters were destroyed by Cassandra after she died.

But, in the 160 or so which survive,

there's the occasional glimpse of Austen's own feelings about portraiture.

On the 3rd November, 1813,

Austen wrote from London after visiting a portrait exhibition,

"I do not despair of having my picture in the exhibition at last,

"all white and red with my head on one side."

She loved going to portrait exhibitions

and it was after one of those visits that she was able to speak.

Is it jocularly? Is it wistfully?

She brings to her lips and on to the page

the possibility that there's a portrait of her that could be there.

This looks to me like quite a formal lady who is adopting

a sort of official position and presenting herself to the world.

But that's not what Jane Austen was like, at all.

You can't imagine the woman who writes about having to give doses of rhubarb

and cook the mutton posing like that.

If there was ever a period in Jane Austen's life

when she might have covertly sat for a portrait,

I think it's very likely to have been between October

and December of 1815.

That was because she went to London on 3rd or 4th October

to negotiate with her new publishers.

Her brother suddenly falls very ill

and she ends up staying for almost three months.

And I think there's a real sea change.

There's a confidence about her.

She suddenly feels that she's made it.

Here we are. The inner sanctum of the John Murray publishing house.

With the library and drawing room.

-Beautiful room.

-Is this largest in the room?

-This is Jane Austen's publisher.

-This is John Murray II.

Who she called an amiable rogue.

She must have felt very proud to have been part of this publishing house

because John Murray was so famous and revered

and because he had people like Lord Byron - literary figures that she admired.

Do you think he was taking a bit of a risk, a gamble, in taking on Jane Austen?

Well, Murray actually took no risk at all.

He wanted to. He made an offer to Jane Austen.

Jane Austen said, "No. I think they'll do better than you expect

"and I'll publish on commission."

So she is confident.

She is feeling this sense of,

"I'm going to take control of my business affairs."

Paula has come to Austen's publisher to try to solve the mystery

of the inscription on the back of the portrait.

If it is Jane, why is the name spelt "Austin" with an I?

A hunt through the archive of the author's financial transactions

yields a fascinating revelation.

I was just intrigued to see what you think about this.

-So here we have...

-Yes, this is a cheque in the John Murray archive.

-So, we've seen this a lot.

-So, it's "Austin" with an I, isn't it?

An I rather than an E.

The other thing I really wanted to ask you about

was whether you thought the counter signature was in her hand.

She's got quite a distinctive hand.

If you look at the J and the A,

I would argue that that's Jane Austen's handwriting.

So why does she spell it with an I?

She was keen to get the money.

She's earning money from her own pen, which she longed to do.

And it wouldn't surprise me

if she sat for her portrait and didn't tell anybody.

That's brilliant. There she is in print for the first time.

It's terribly poignant because on the one hand

Jane Austen is at her most creative.

She is flying high but she hasn't got long to live.

Within two years of this time when she's feeling so good

and confident about herself,

she will have had a lingering illness, she will be dead

and she will have sunk back into obscurity

and within a few years of her death, her novels will be out of print.

Before Paula presents her findings to a panel of Austen experts,

she needs to counter one major argument against her theory.

If Austen did sit for a portrait,

why didn't her family know anything about it?

While not claiming that she's identified the artist,

Paula feels she's found a possible answer

from Austen's wider social circle.

I found some journals from a family called the Chutes.

Now, Eliza Chute consistently misspells Austen.

There's not a single occasion where she spells with an E.

And then I found... It was a heart-stopping moment

because I discovered to my shock

that she was married in St Margaret's Church.

It was her parish church. She lived in Great George Street

so the view in our portrait would have been her view.

Not only that,

but I also discovered that she was a very gifted amateur painter.

It wasn't exactly Elizabeth Bennet going to Pemberley

but Chawton was the big house in Jane Austen's world.

Thank you.

Well, this is the big day, the great debate.

I'm feeling really excited.

A little but nervous but mainly excited.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Chawton belonged to her brother, Edward, who'd been adopted by rich cousins.

That's why we've picked this historic venue imbued with so many memories

to bring together three pre-eminent scholars of the Austen world

to this very dining table where Jane would have sat with her family.

I imagine her walking up this long path

from her little cottage in Chawton,

perhaps being called upon to do babysitting duties,

which she, frankly, quite resented.

And I think about her taking that long walk

and very much feeling the poor relation.

Paula now faces three of the people

who know more about Jane Austen than anyone else on the planet.

It's quite tiny, isn't it?

Professor Kathryn Sutherland of Oxford University,

Professor Claudia Johnson of Princeton

and the formidable Deirdre Le Faye.

It's delicate.

I'm sure we'll have a lively discussion.

-I like the curled-up moggy on the table.

-Yes.

What did we learn from the fashion historian?

She dated the dress firmly 1812-'15.

Yes, but you may have fashion spot on one year

but that's not to say you don't keep your dress

and wear it for several years after, is it?

If you sit for your portrait, you wear your dress.

-Your best dress.

-You don't go and get something out of your wardrobe that's two or three years old.

It just doesn't happen.

It might happen in a family who are not very well off, like the Austens.

-But she notices, doesn't she, that, in 1815, long sleeves are bang in.

-Yeah. She notices.

It is worth noting

that in that period Jane Austen has more money

than at any other time in her life.

-1813-'15, you have her shopping in Bond Street.

-She shops.

Gloves on, ladies.

The inscription on the back triggers a lively response.

Why is it spelt AustIN? Totally, totally wrong.

Couldn't have been done by family, couldn't have been done by friends.

-And why is that?

-Because the name is AustEN.

-Would any of her friends call her "Austin" with an I?

-No.

So, in her time, she's called AustIN by Eliza Chute, Elizabeth Lee,

the Countess Of Morley, Mrs Mosley

and John Murray on the royalty cheque.

-So, again, "Miss Jane AustIN."

-That's the more normal spelling.

But, Deirdre, in Eliza Chute's journals, she always, always spells "Austin" with an I.

Yeah, but she didn't know them very well. They didn't like her.

-James is there every single week.

-I dare say, but...

And she calls him "Austin", always with an I.

But it's Paula's theory about the family resemblances

which provokes the most heated exchanges.

-Oh, the noses!

-The Austen nose.

-Tell me what you think.

Louise Ann specifically said she had a small nose.

No way could you call that portrait as having a small nose.

-You know this so well. Do you see a family resemblance?

-No.

-I do.

-I do.

-I don't.

I think the plains of the face, the eyebrows,

the relationship between the eyebrows,

the shape of the eyes and the length of the nose.

The length of the nose. Yes, exactly.

I wonder if small could just mean narrow.

If you were making up a picture of Jane Austen,

I don't think you would specify this particular nose.

Whatever this nose is, it's not generic.

If you want to look at Cassandra's portrait,

these noses are not dissimilar.

There is something else and that is the decided asymmetry of the eyes.

This has it too. That may be Cassandra's bad drawing.

Deirdre, why don't you see the family resemblance?

I think it's too far away from the James Andrews miniature.

Oh, Deirdre, that makes me completely critified.

-Wait a minute.

-That is... Oh, no!

The James Andrews miniature was cooked up from Cassandra's sketch

and it was certified in a sense by these three, Anna, Caroline

-and James Edward.

-Yes, but.

-He said it didn't look like her!

They said it looked reasonably enough like her

to be presented to the public.

No, I can't abide that one

because that, to me, is everything that's bad about Jane Austen.

It's prettified, it's airbrushed.

It makes her look demure, dim and prim and I absolutely...

-That was 1870s.

-Exactly, it's Victorian sentimental tosh, frankly.

So, the big question is, why didn't members of her family

know about the existence of this portrait?

So, Eliza Chute lived very near St Margaret's church,

was married there,

she was a keen and talented amateur artist

known to do portraits intimately, she always spelt "Austin" with an I.

There are people out there who know the family,

who might have had an interest in drawing her and knew what she looked like.

I'm very sorry because I like Eliza Chute.

I wish she could have known the Austens.

-But she did know them.

-But she did not know them well.

It would actually make more sense if they didn't know each other that well

because then this could become lost...to the Austens.

That almost makes the idea of it being both a portrait and a narrative more appealing actually.

CLAUDIA: Yes, and I think it was drawn by someone that knew her.

DEIRDRE: What I want is documentary evidence

and until someone can supply me with it,

I maintain it's an imaginary portrait.

I don't believe that this is an imaginary portrait

in the sense that someone just made up her features.

They're too specific for that and they too consciously collect things

that people who knew her associated with her.

Kathryn?

I'm quite taken with the idea that it could be an amateur

who knew Jane Austen and didn't necessarily

move closely in the circle of the family, like Eliza Chute.

I believe that a friend, maybe not even a good friend, or an acquaintance...

You know, Austen, when she was in London did...go out on her own.

And I believe that she enjoyed the life that she was able,

for a brief period of time, to enjoy there.

It's a lovely quote...

She did not say, "I went and had my portrait painted."

But who knows what she's doing in those three months? We don't know what she was doing.

I suppose, in a sense, this is crunch time

and I want to ask you all what you think.

Deirdre, is this a portrait of Jane Austen?

No. No.

She's looking soulful, she's looking at the heavens for inspiration.

-She's not!

-Yes, she is. This is my opinion. She's looking up.

-She's not looking like that.

This is what I see in it. That she is solemn, almost sanctimonious,

very consciously posed. "I am the great writer" attitude.

No, I couldn't accept that as being her.

-Kathryn.

-When I look at that portrait I see an image

that looks like Jane Austen.

Not because it looks like Jane Austen

that I carry around in my head or my heart

but it looks like other images I've seen of Jane Austen.

Authenticated images i.e. the National Portrait Gallery cartoon.

The portrait itself, there are huge questions around it.

Who created it? For what purpose? And when?

Huge questions there,

but I'm happy to think that looks like Jane Austen.

I also agree.

And when you compare this picture with other members of Austen's family, the case gets stronger.

So, altogether, I think this is a very intriguing candidate

and I want to know more about it.

If this picture does turn out to be Jane Austen,

do you think it would change our view of her?

-Claudia.

-Some people love to think of Jane Austen as the retired,

sweet-natured aunt who put her work down

rather than work on her novels every time her nieces

and nephews came through the door.

This would certainly counter that fantasy about Jane Austen.

Kathryn?

It doesn't fit our sort of chick-lit view of Jane Austen that we have at the moment.

There is no place for Jane Austen,

godmother of modern teenage romance, in that portrait

and that's the Jane Austen who's uppermost in our mind.

But it's giving us another facet, another way of thinking about her.

This really couldn't have gone any better from Paula's point of view.

Two out the three experts say the portrait really could be Jane Austen

and definitely needs further research.

The experts have departed. How do you feel that went, Paula?

Much better than expected.

All I care about is that this looks like her

and might be an image of what she really looked like.

So, for me, that is a result.

This may not be the completely tidy ending you get in a Jane Austen novel

but the enigmatic face in the picture has raised many fascinating questions

and could even overturn our vision of one of the world's most famous women.

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