Portrait of Edward Austen Knight Returns to Chawton House

More than half a century after his departure, Jane Austen's brother has returned to his Hampshire home. Edward Austen Knight or, more accurately, his life-size portrait in oils, is once more installed in Chawton House, the Elizabethan manor he owned and in whose environs his sister spent the most productive years of her literary life.

The painting shows Edward as a young man on the Grand Tour of Europe. It is thought to have been done in Rome in 1788, although the identity of the artist is uncertain. At that time Edward was being groomed to inherit the Chawton property and other estates owned by Thomas and Catherine Knight, a childless couple who were distant cousins of the Austens.

The third son of a country parson, he was plucked from obscurity to enjoy vast wealth. After inheriting he was able to offer his widowed mother and sisters, Jane and Cassandra, a cottage on the Chawton House estate. After ten years of moving from one rented property to another, this gave Jane the peace and security she needed to write. All of her novels were written, or revised, and published while she lived there.

For many years the portrait hung in the dining room at Chawton House but it was sold off in 1952 for just £24 during a major clear-out prompted by death duties. The buyer, a Colonel Satterthwaite, died within months of the purchase but left a letter specifying that Richard Knight, the three times great-grandson of Edward Austen Knight, should have a say in what became of the picture. Richard was just thirteen years old at the time and the painting passed into the hands of the Jane Austen Society, of which the Colonel had been a leading member.

After gracing the wall of a council office in Alton for many years, it was eventually moved to Jane Austen's cottage in Chawton. But standing more than eight feet tall, it was far too large for the tiny front room and could only be displayed without a frame. With the help of funds raised by members of the Jane Austen Society and other donors, the painting was restored and a new frame made. It has been returned to the dining room at Chawton House in the week that marks the 235th anniversary of Jane Austen's birth.

Steve Lawrence, Sandy Lerner and Richard Knight