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Art & Art Exhibitions
in Regency London

Jane’s interest in art and art exhibitions is evidenced in her letters:

Monday May 24:

… Henry and I went to the Exhibition in Spring Gardens. [Held by the Society of Painters in Oil and Water Colours]. It is not thought a good collection but I am very well pleased - particularly (pray tell Fanny) with a small portrait of Mrs. Bingley, excessively like her. I went in hopes of seeing one of her sister, but there was no Mrs. Darcy;- perhaps however, I may find her in the Great Exhibition which we shall go to, if we have time; - I have no chance of her in the collection of Sir Joshua Reynolds’s Paintings, which is now shewing in Pall Mall, and which we are also to visit…’

In an earlier visit to London , in a letter dated Thurs. 18-Sat.20 April 1811, Jane refers to ...

Mary and I, after disposing of her Father and Mother, went to the Liverpool Museum [of Natural History exhibitions, in Piccadilly] and the British Gallery [Gallery of the British Institution, Pall Mall], and I had some amusement at each, though my preference for Men and Women, always inclines me to attend more to the company than the sight.

Maggie Lane makes the point that Jane’s opportunities for looking at paintings were mainly confined to those hanging on the walls of the many houses she visited, where family portraits dominated.

The fashion for print rooms grew from the middle of the 18th century until the early 19th century. At The Vyne, the home of the Chute family, and one which Jane Austen knew, the Print Room. has several prints pasted to the walls.

‘The prints were put up in the little parlour, and as my brothers happened to be at The Vyne, they greatly assisted in doing so, particularly James, who showed great taste in those matters. The prints had always been kept in a large portfolio in the gallery on large black stools.’

A contemporary family member, commented in later years that some of the engravings were too valuable for such a situation – and certainly the system goes against current archiving practices.

Anne Harbers

References
Le Faye, Deirdre, Jane Austen’s Letters, Oxford, 1995
Lane, Maggie, Jane Austen’s World, Carlton, 1996
Murray, Venetia, High Society A Social History of the Regency Period, 1788-1830, Viking, 1998
Plumb, J.H., Georgian Delights, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, UK 1980
The Vyne, The National Trust, 1998

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29 January 2004

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