‘Jane Austen’s Bath’ is the title of a new exhibition which will run at Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Victoria Art Gallery from 4th July throughout the year until October.
Featuring some of the gallery’s best watercolours and prints, visitors will be able to see the Bath that Austen saw on her visits here, experiencing the sights and sounds and the places so vividly depicted in her novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey.
Highlights include several manuscripts and two letters written to her sister, Cassandra, borrowed from Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton.
The first was sent from Bath, in which Jane describes her social life here and the second from Bond Street in London.
The exhibition will also feature a hand-written poem by Jane and period accessories, including gloves and an umbrella.
Councillor Patrick Anketell-Jones (Conservative, Lansdown), Bath & North East Somerset Council’s Cabinet Member for Economic Development, said: “This is an unique opportunity to see Bath through the eyes of Jane Austen, who lived here between 1801 and 1805.
“The show is free to local Discovery card holders and has been organised to coincide with the Jane Austen Festival in September.”
Jon Benington, Victoria Art Gallery manager, added: “To Jane Austen and her characters, Bath was a busy modern city, full of dazzling new buildings and crowds of visitors.
“Her characters came here looking for love, entertainment and the chance to meet new people. For all of them it was a place to broaden horizons and escape everyday life.
“Although her first documented visit to Bath was in 1797 when she was 22, members of her family had been living here for years, as is demonstrated by the marriage certificate of Jane’s parents from St Swithin’s Church, a copy of which is featured in this exhibition.
“It is likely that she visited Bath regularly during her childhood and knew the city well.
“Jane Austen didn’t write a great deal during the years she lived in Bath. There are rumours that this was because she was depressed and unhappy here.
“It is true that she experienced personal tragedy here – her father died suddenly at their home in Green Park. However, because many of the letters that she wrote here were later destroyed, we know very little about how she actually felt about Bath.”
The Victoria Art Gallery is run by Bath & North East Somerset Council.
Standard opening times are Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm, Sunday 1.30– 5pm, closed Mondays.
However, during the summer it will be open until 7pm on Thursdays (6th, 13th, 20th and 27th August).
3 Comments
Maggie Craig
Sunday 19th July, 2015 at 19:33What are the two ladies in the painting doing? The one on the right seems to be cutting out shapes with scissors. Is the one on the left tatting?
Nicholas Ennos
Sunday 21st June, 2015 at 10:40The connection to Bath in the novels is not based on Jane Austen. As I show in my book “Jane Austen – a New Revelation” the true author of the novels was Jane Austen’s cousin and sister in law, Eliza de Feuillide. She could not publish under her own name because she was the illegitimate daughter of Warren Hastings, the Governor General of India.
Eliza visited Bath on several occasions. On the first, in the early 1790s she visited with her husband and became pregnant while there, which led to a miscarriage. She also visited again in 1804 when she also visited Lyme Regis and Weymouth. It was this visit which inspired her to write “Persuasion”. “Northanger Abbey” is probably based on Eliza’s visit to Bath with her husband as mentioned. We can be certain that Jane Austen did not write “Northanger Abbey” as it is based in close detail on Stoneleigh Abbey and was sent for publication in 1803. A letter of 1806 from Jane Austen’s mother records that she and Jane Austen had no idea what Stoneleigh Abbey looked like before they visited it that year. Eliza de Feuillide, however, almost certainly visited Stoneleigh Abbey in 1794, when she passed within a mile of it on her journey to the North of England.
Nicola Andrews
Saturday 6th June, 2015 at 15:31Sounds like an interesting show!