Portrait of Jane Austen from James Stanier Clarke, the Librarian of the Prince Regent

 

This is the very important, recently recognised, 19th Century Portrait of Jane Austen, painted in 1815 and discovered in the exceptional "Liber Amicorum" (Friendship Book) belonging to the Rev. James Stanier (later King George IV of Great Britain and Ireland). Clarke was a competent, if amateur, watercolourist whom Jane Austen acknowledged as her friend in the last letter she wrote to him in 1816. Detailed and solid evidence of the Book and the Watercolour has been published in "James Stanier Clarke and his Watercolour Portrait of Jane Austen" by Richard James Wheeler and is available.
This portrait of Jane Austen makes Clarke's Friendship Book a literary treasure of inordinate rarity. The National Portrait Gallery in England incorrectly claims an absolute monopoly in Jane Austen portraiture by owning the only depiction of Jane Austen in the world which (they say) "can be authenticated": (ie by the Gallery themselves). Their picture is a very slight and unflattering drawing reputedly made by her sister Cassandra; but largely disseminated to the public at large by numerous illustrators in an "improved" version. It has been described as "a disappointing scratch" and is a desperately poor memorial of the novelist. Nevertheless physiognomists identify the sitter as the same person appearing in Clarke's watercolour.

The National Portrait Gallery's claim to a monopoly is incorrect. There are in fact just three portraits of the novelist (including Clarke's) which are known and claimed to be authentic.
The Friendship Book itself is a time-capsule from the Age of Sensibility, beautifully bound in its original tooled green morocco.

It contains, additionally, more than 100 contemporary paintings, drawings, holograph texts, verses (mostly signed and dated) and autographs by notable artists, authors, poets, sculptors and naval characters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries: (eg George Romney, John Russell, John Flaxman, William Hodges, William Hayley, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, Nicholas Pocock, Nelson's Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy).