Miss Lambe from Jane Austen’s unfinished novel Sanditon brought to life

Harris’s portrait sits alongside new work by the award-winning poet and performer, Dr Rommi Smith, Harewood’s Writer in Residence for the duration of the exhibition. Through experimentation with poetic form and composition, as well as her research into the life and work of Austen and Turner, Smith has begun a series of new poems responding to the historic material and themes of the show. The first two poems in the series are specially printed for display in collaboration with Thin Ice Press, at the University of York. Smith has also co-facilitated a series of public-facing creative workshops, in collaboration with musician and composer Christella Litras, inviting audiences to fuse their written responses to the exhibition with music. Smith’s residency will culminate on the 4th of October 2025, with a live performance at Harewood. During the event, attendees from the workshop series will perform alongside Smith, who will share the writing produced during her residency, in collaboration with Litras.

Lela Harris said “When planning the portrait I’d always wanted Miss Lambe to be looking directly at the viewer. Initially I’d contemplated portraying her with a defiant expression but after some reflection and a great discussion with poet and writer Dr Rommi Smith, which centered around Jane Austen’s progressive depiction of Miss Lambe’s frailty and her being a recipient of tenderness, in a wider colonial context of enslavement, where Black people were dehumanised and therefore falsely constructed as less capable of experiencing pain than white Europeans, I very much wanted to embrace the characters fragility and Austen’s description of Miss Lambe as ‘precious, chilly and tender’.

I greatly admire Austen for the way she so casually introduces Miss Lambe into Sandition. There seems to be no fanfare or overemphasis on her ethnicity, especially with regards to her wealth, which is really refreshing, so I’ve tried to integrate this feeling into her portrait. I’ve kept things deliberately simple and unfinished to reflect that we don’t know Miss Lambe’s full story. Being able to use found 20th-century papers from Harewood’s stationery cupboard was a real joy. I think the writing papers help to anchor the drawing in Harewood’s complex colonial history and I very much enjoyed the challenge of working across slightly different surfaces.”

Celebrating the 250th anniversary since their shared birth year with new narratives, ‘Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter’ is co-curated by Harewood House Trust and the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York, working with independent curators Jade Foster and Diane Howse.

Harewood House, located just north of Leeds, is a classic example of an 18th-century Palladian country house. It was built by Edwin Lascelles, using profits from the transatlantic trade in enslaved African people and associated industries. Harewood’s connections to transatlantic slavery are addressed within the show, alongside an exploration of Austen’s and Turner’s work within their colonial contexts.

Neither Jane Austen nor JMW Turner had aristocratic backgrounds but they both had privileged access to the world of the British country house, whether as a commissioned artist, an invited guest, as tourists or through family connections. Turner’s paintings of Harewood remain some of the most iconic works in Harewood’s collection. As a young, aspiring artist at the very start of his career, he was invited by the Lascelles family to paint the House and its landscape. Nine paintings of the house, castle and its surrounding landscapes remain in the collection and are on display as part of the show.

Harewood provided the springboard for one of the most important sketching trips of Turner’s career, where he discovered his love of landscape and began to push the boundaries of watercolour painting. Austen knew of the Lascelles family at Harewood, suggestively naming a character after them in Mansfield Park (1814), a novel that explores empire and slavery as key themes.

Professor Jennie Batchelor, Head and Professor of English at the University of York and a Co-Curator of Austen and Turner, says: “Part of the inspiration for Miss Lambe’s dress, and attitude comes from a late 1810s fashion plate showing ‘Sea-side Walking Dress’ from the Lady’s Magazine, a magazine we know Jane Austen read. It is fitting that Miss Lambe sits at the seaside resort of Sanditon with a book in her hand and I can’t help but wonder what she is reading? It feels even more fitting that she looks directly at the viewer, inviting us to see her as if for the first time. Precious, indeed.”

Lela Harris, Miss Lambe is on display in the Spanish Library until 19 October

Austen & Turner: A Country House Encounter exhibition is open daily, 10.30am – 4pm

FREE to Harewood Members and included in Harewood day tickets.