Digitally Reconstructing the Reynolds Retrospective Attended by Jane Austen in 1813: A Report on E-Work-in-Progress

Austen's interest in the art of painting is already well known; she famously described her own writing in a metaphor borrowed from miniature painting ("two-inches of ivory").3 For literary historians of Austen, there is the tantalizing possibility of tracking the show's influence to specific allusions in (or influences upon) her fiction. The multiple editions of the exhibit Catalogue (Mannings mentions four) record these changes, with the total pictures increasing to 143 in later versions. Since Austen saw the show ten days after it opened, allowing for a few early tweaks but not the June expansion, our website honors the second edition of the Catalogue as its virtual copy-text-which still shows only 141 paintings.7 The Catalogue duly records which painting hung on which wall in any specific room and even indicates approximate neighbors through its chronological numbering system. Knowing that our own post-salon aesthetic and our familiarity with modern museum practices risked an anachronistic wall aesthetic, we took our visual cues from surviving contemporary images that show exhibits and art galleries both before and after 1813.8 The Rowlandson print of 1808 determined our site's overall look and color palette, yet shows more generous spacing on the British Institute's walls than the sheer number of Reynolds canvasses allowed for the 1813 show. [...]drawn by Siddons's fame, Jane and her brother Henry "planned to go to the theatre" on 22 April 1811 "to see Mrs Siddons but," Deirdre Le Faye reports, they "are told she will not be appearing and so give up their seats."