There has long been controversy surrounding the Rice portrait, and whether it does in fact show 13 year-old Jane Austen, or whether the style of her dress (a typical Regency style, not Georgian as a young Jane would have worn), and the canvas maker's stamp on the back (that of William Legg, who sold canvasses in High Holborn in London between about 1801 and 1806), makes the Rice Portrait an image of a different young girl - potentially one of Jane's nieces. Until now, only one example of a William Legg canvas stamp was known of. But in an article in the Financial Times, writer Anjana Ahuja writes about a portrait she recently bought of a 'Mrs Smith' by the artist James Northcote, and this painting is signed and dated 1803 - and it has a William Legg canvas stamp on the back. This is important as it matches the stamp on the Rice portrait - which would seem to prove that the Rice portrait also has to be from this 1801-1806 period, which would make it too late to be of a 13-year-old Austen. However, the National Portrait Gallery acknowledges that it remains possible that the girl depicted in the Rice portrait is Jane Austen. Nevertheless, they continue to believe that the stylistic features of the portrait, and the colourman’s stamp on the reverse of the canvas, suggest a date of about 1801-6. The official website for the Rice portrait disputes what the stamp says and adds that it could have been a different William Legg.