Rarely seen artworks created by Jane Austen’s sister are set to go on display in her home county to mark the 250th anniversary of the author’s birth.
Hampshire, where Austen was born, wrote all her novels, and died, is throwing a year-long celebration throughout 2025 marking the world-famous author’s birthday with a host of special events, tours and exhibitions.
And as part of the commemorations, Jane Austen’s House – the most treasured site dedicated to the writer in the world – is staging the largest-ever public display of the confirmed works of her elder sister, Cassandra Austen, a talented water-colourist.
Although small in scale, this latest exhibition at the cottage in Chawton – Jane’s home for the last eight years of her life and where she wrote, and published, her novels – brings together a range of artworks by Cassandra, many of which are on public display for the first time.
While her more famous artworks are two sketches of Jane, one on show in London’s National Portrait Gallery and the other in private ownership, the new exhibition showcases examples of her meticulous copy work, alongside some of her lesser-known family portraits.
The Art of Cassandra – opening 29 April and free with House entry – displays 10 of Cassandra’s artworks; six of which have never been displayed publicly before.
Made possible due to recent donations and loans to Jane Austen’s House from descendants of the Austen family, and a loan from the Holburne Museum in Bath, the display has been curated by Janine Barchas, Professor of English at the University of Texas, and the author of The Novel Life of Jane Austen.
Barchas’ recent research has focused on Cassandra’s artworks, many of which proved to be scrupulously copied from existing books and prints – a valued artistic skill before the invention of the photograph.
For seven of the artworks on display, Barchas can show matching prints or bookplates, revealing more about the reading habits of the family and the larger artistic context of drawing, reading, and music-making in which the women lived and worked.
Not since Cassandra’s creative years in the cottage the family called home have so many of her surviving artworks been gathered in one place, four of which were only recently discovered among the possessions of Austen descendants.
Cassandra’s artworks are also a reminder of the many paintings and drawings in Jane’s novels, which Cassandra may have inspired – in particular Elinor Dashwood’s drawings in Sense and Sensibility.
The exhibition will run until 8 June and is free with House entry (£15 adults, £11 for those aged 17 – 26 years and £7.25 for children, 6-16 years).
Full details can be found at https://janeaustens.house/visit/jane-austen-250/
For more about Jane Austen 250 events across Hampshire, see www.visit-hampshire.co.uk/whats-on/jane-austens-250
All tourist information for Hampshire can be found at www.visit-hampshire.co.uk
Photo, above: The Art Of Cassandra at Jane Austen’s House, Cassandra’s hand drawn copy of a plate from an instruction manual entitled Cipriani’s Rudiments of Drawing (1786), copy dated 1795 – credit Luke Shears
Below: The Art of Cassandra at Jane Austen’s House, Cassandra’s Watercolour Landscape dated 1802 – credit Luke Shears
