The other talented Austen sister
- Deborah Yaffe
- Apr 28
- 2 min read
Cassandra Austen’s family considered her a skilled artist, but for most Janeites, her claim to artistic fame rests, uneasily, on a single work: The not-terribly-flattering sketch of her famous sister, which served as the basis for several later images of the novelist.
But an exhibit opening tomorrow at Jane Austen’s House in Chawton, England, will offer visitors a chance to reappraise Cassandra’s artistic accomplishments. The show, “The Art of Cassandra”—another element of the museum’s bountiful Austen 250 programming--includes ten pieces, “the largest-ever public display of the confirmed works of Cassandra Austen,” the website claims.
The show runs through June 8—closing, frustratingly, a mere four days before my own Austen 250 visit to Chawton, although the museum plans to offer an online version as well.
Among the works on display are two portraits of family members (although not the most famous: That one, now owned by the UK’s National Portrait Gallery, is currently in Australia), along with seven images that Cassandra meticulously copied from books, periodicals, or prints.
In an era before cameras and photocopy machines, “this imitative skill was very much prized,” University of Texas-Austin professor Janine Barchas, the exhibit’s curator, said during a 2024 interview on the podcast of the Jane Austen Society of North America. In that context, Cassandra’s talents were considered significant.
And as Barchas noted in an article published last year, earlier work on Cassandra’s copying has already deepened our understanding of the thirteen tiny portraits of kings and queens that she contributed to the teenaged Jane Austen’s “History of England.” Although some scholars believe that the royal images were portraits of Austen family members, at least two were copied from work by caricaturist Henry Bunbury.
Whatever her family thought of Cassandra's talents, later generations took a different attitude toward accomplishments like hers. “Romanticism rears its head and prizes original genius,” Barchas said on the podcast. “Romanticism hails invention as true art, as opposed to anything imitative, which is mere copying.”
Poor Cassandra: As if the kerfuffle over the burning of the letters wasn't bad enough, now she's dissed by a bunch of long-haired bad-boy poets. At least she's got her own PBS series.
The first time I looked at Jane Austen in the very famous portrait in the print that claims to portray her, I was very perplexed by the expression on her face: << But is this really Jane Austen?! >> Then I discovered that her sister Cassandra had made two portraits of her, one in 1805, when their father died and one in 1810, while Austen was preparing to publish her second work "Sense and Sensibility". In the 1805 portrait you can clearly understand two things: the first is that Jane was tall, very tall, like Lydia Bennet and Charlotte Heywood, the second is that in this portrait Jane is experiencing her moment of reflection on life and death. In the 1810 portrait you…