'Definitive' Austen portrait revealed

Artist Melissa Dring used her forensic portrait experience

A portrait of the British author Jane Austen, painted by a forensic artist, has been unveiled at the Jane Austen Museum in Bath.

Melissa Dring, who recently painted a portrait of the Italian composer Vivaldi, was commissioned by the centre to paint a picture of the artists as she would have looked during her time in Bath.

Austen, the world-famous author of Pride and Prejudice and Emma, left the city in 1816 after living there for 15 years.

Dring used anecdotal evidence from Austen's contemporaries and other information from the early 19th Century to help her with the portrait.

Forensic training

She also used information from her relatives and friends.

Trained at the Winchester College of Fine Art in the 1960s and the Royal Academy Schools, the 58-year-old artist has worked as a forensic artists with several police forces in the UK.

She has also trained as a forensic artist at the FBI training centre at Quantico in Virginia.

Her portrait will add to the limited number already made of Austen.

'Intelligence'

They were made by Austen's sister Cassandra - a tiny pencil and watercolour sketch held in the National Portrait Gallery in London and a steel engraving.

There are no other likenesses of the author known to exist, other than two silhouettes by Cassandra Austen, and a back view that is said to be a self-portrait.

Those who have seen it so far are struck by the eyes," said David Baldock. "Unlike all the other images of Jane, this one has a real light and intelligence."

The new portrait will be housed at the Jane Austen Centre.