Portrait known as 'Mrs Smith'

The request was refused by The National Portrait Gallery.

Dear National Portrait Gallery,

The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) has relied on the portrait known as 'Mrs Smith', and said to be by James Northcote, in private ownership, as evidence that the portrait known as the 'Rice Portrait' is not a painting of a young Jane Austen. Eg. cited in 'Rice Portrait summary and timeline', written by Dr Lucy Peltz, Senior Curator and Head of Collections Displays on 13 April 2017 and supplied to me in a previous Freedom of Information Request.

Given the longstanding disagreement between the NPG and the supporters of the Rice Portrait, and the importance of this new discovery for the veracity of the claim of the Rice Portrait to be Jane Austen, can you please tell me which individual members of staff (either paid or unpaid) of the NPG and which Trustees (past or present) of the NPG have personally inspected the portrait said to be of 'Mrs Smith'?

Yours faithfully,

Ellie Bennett

FOI Request, The National Portrait Gallery

Dear sir/madam,

Thank you for your enquiry.

If you are making a request for recorded information under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act 2000 or for an internal review of the response you received to a previous FoI request, please accept this message as an acknowledgement of the receipt of your request. We will respond to your specific queries within 20 working days, as required under the FoI Act.

If you are seeking clarification relating to a previous FoI request or are making another type of enquiry related to the FoI Act, we will respond to your message from 2nd January 2019.

Kind regards,

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FOI Request, The National Portrait Gallery

Dear Ellie Bennett,

 

Thank you for your information request under the Freedom of Information
(FoI) Act, dated 25^th December 2018.

 

Can you please clarify what you mean when you say “this new discovery”?
What new discovery are you referring to?

 

Once we receive this clarification from you, we can proceed with dealing
with your information request.

 

Kind regards,

 

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Dear National Portrait Gallery,

I thought this was clear from the first paragraph of my letter.

'This new discovery' refers to the painting in private ownership known as 'Mrs Smith' by James Northcote dated 1803 which was authenticated by the National Portrait Gallery in November 2016. You have a file in the Heinz Archive on this painting.

It featured in an article in the Financial Times dated March 30, 2017: https://www.ft.com/content/9f68d0a2-140a...

I trust this clarifies my request and look forward to receiving your response.

Yours sincerely,

Ellie Bennett

FOI Request, The National Portrait Gallery

Dear Ellie Bennett,

 

Thank you for your information request under the Freedom of Information
Act, dated 25^th December 2018.

 

Please see below the answer to your question.

 

Can you please tell me which individual members of staff (either paid or
unpaid) of the NPG and which Trustees (past or present) of the NPG have
personally inspected the portrait said to be of 'Mrs Smith'?

The names of any National Portrait Gallery staff members or Trustees who
have personally inspected the portrait known as 'Mrs Smith' (said to be by
James Northcote, in private ownership) have not been provided. This
information has been withheld under section 40(2) – Personal information
of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which states that:

(2) Any information to which a request for information relates is also
exempt information if—

(a) it constitutes personal data

 

I hope you find the response to your question satisfactory.

 

After 3 months from the last meaningful correspondence this case will be
closed. For an internal review request please contact us within a 3 month
period, otherwise your request will be treated as a new enquiry.

 

Under the terms of the Act, we are required to inform you of our appeals
procedure in case you are not satisfied with response.  A copy of our
public leaflet on Freedom of Information, which advises how to appeal to
the Gallery and your right to appeal to the Information Commissioner, can
be found on the Gallery website at:
[1]http://www.npg.org.uk/about/foi.php.

 

 

Kind regards,

 

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