It’s no sale for Austen ‘portrait’

A portrait of a young girl that some believe is the only known painting of English novelist Jane Austen failed to sell at auction Thursday.

Christie’s said no one offered the owner’s minimum price for the painting, which had been expected to fetch $400,000 to $800,000.

The portrait by English society artist Ozias Humphry was put up for sale by Henry Rice, a distant relative of the writer of classics such as “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice.” Austen died in 1817.

Rice and his family believe the painting is of Austen as an adolescent, but in 1948 a leading Austen scholar dismissed the authenticity of the portrait.