The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 20.0270 Wednesday, 27 May 2009
[1] From: Louis W. Thompson <
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Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 23:19:45 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
[2] From: Jess Winfield <
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Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 12:56:10 -0700
Subj: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
[3] From: Stanley Wells <
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Date: Friday, 22 May 2009 15:17:01 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Louis W. Thompson <
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Date: Wednesday, 20 May 2009 23:19:45 -0700
Subject: 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
On May 8, 2009 I posted the question:
"Does anybody on the list believe the new portrait is Shakespeare -
wholeheartedly and without reservations?"
On May 18, 2009, Hardy wrote: "On the surface this question would appear
to be an innocent one, but now I am beginning to regret that I posted it."
The problem: the introduction of "belief" into what Hardy hopes will be
a responsible academic discussion. Hardy quoted the OED on the word
"believe" and focused on that sense of the word that is "faith" -- an
acceptance of something for which there is no proof.
"Looking at these definitions," Hardy wrote, "I have begun to wonder if
I should have permitted a question of faith in the first place, but I
did and will try to see if scholarly exchange is still possible."
When I posted the question, I too was hoping for a scholarly exchange. I
hoped to find someone outside the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust who had
come to accept the Cobbe portrait as Shakespeare - someone who had
scholarly reasons for his beliefs and who could explain them in precise
language.
No one of the sort has appeared.
I received several off-list responses to my question from persons who --
for one reason or another -- didn't believe the sitter was Shakespeare.
On list, Lynn Brenner dismissed the Cobbe with a couple of sentences:
"Given the paucity of evidence, one must be an ardent wishful thinker to
believe it 'wholeheartedly and without reservations.' (And as you can
probably guess, my own view is Bah, humbug.)"
Stanley Wells sternly replied: "Lyn Brenner's offensively dismissive
comment might be justified if she gave any sign of having considered the
evidence that has been adduced." Wells went on to refer readers to the
"Shakespeare Found" section of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust website
and also to the new book, Shakespeare Found! A Life Portrait at
Last...." published jointly by the Cobbe Foundation, The Shakespeare
Birthplace Trust, and edited by Stanley Wells.
Belief? Faith? Scholarly discussion?
We all have well-grounded beliefs which have little to do with faith. I
believe the planets move around the sun in elliptical patterns because
of the work of Johannes Kepler and later scientists, though quite
honestly, I would be unable to check their calculations.
So when I asked for believers in the Cobbe portrait on this list, I was
looking for well-grounded believers. I didn't ask the question in a chat
room. I asked in this scholarly forum.
Hardy wondered whether a scholarly discussion would still be possible
regarding the Cobbe.
Earlier today, May 20, Hardy was able to post an excellent and academic
discussion of the painting. Hopefully his fears have abated
I submit though, that if the discussion occasionally runs to
irreverence, it is due to the grand and certain presentation of the
Cobbe by the Trust, combined with, as Lynn Brenner deftly put it, a
"paucity of evidence" to support it.
"Shakespeare Found! A Life Portrait at Last" they announced.
Did a microscopic examination reveal "W. Shaksp" embroidered on the
sitter's clothes? Did the artist write "This is the poet W. Shakespeare"
somewhere on the frame? Perhaps they found a diary entry: "Went to
Southampton's house and saw a portrait of William Shakespeare" along
with a description of the Cobbe portrait.
Nothing of the sort. The Wells and the Trust present a list of tenuous
associations: the painting almost certainly hung in Wriothesley's house
- (unless it wasn't Shakespeare and it didn't hang in Wriothesley's
house). The Wriothesley and Cobbe families are distantly related.
Someone within living memory of the poet thought the painting was
Shakespeare.
This is Shakespeare by association. It doesn't put the poet on the canvas.
The problems are obvious. Wells and the Trust assert that the Cobbe
portrait was the model for the Droeshout engraving, but the painting
hung for nearly 400 years without anyone noting a similarity. In fact,
someone believed the painting was Sir Walter Ralegh and wrote his name
on the back.
If the Cobbe portrait was Shakespeare, why not simply reproduce it for
the First Folio? Would the designers of the volume have told Droeshout
to use the Cobbe portrait as a model, but give Shakespeare less hair?
What could be wrong with remembering Shakespeare with a full head of hair?
Then there is the date, 1610, or "about 1610" derived by scientific
testing of the wood. Is it really possible to date a painting to the
precise year it was painted? Might other scientists looking at the
painting come up with a different year?
And, how big is "about"? Could the painting have been done in 1600? Or 1630?
We need to hear from the scientists who analyzed the paining, as well as
others in the same field who might agree or disagree. But that may be
outside the range of this forum.
Another line of investigation involves the unidentified painter. He was
obviously a person of great ability, noted in his time. Perhaps he can
be identified by art historians studying his paints and his brush
strokes. Might there be some written record of his commissions and his
portrait subjects?
Wells and the Shakespeare Trust have proved that the Cobbe portrait
might be Shakespeare.
Is it really the poet? That would take a leap of faith.
Louis W. Thompson
[Editor's Note: Above Louis W. Thompson wrote, "Earlier today, May 20,
Hardy was able to post an excellent and academic discussion of the
painting. Hopefully his fears have abated." HMC: Louis, yes, they have.
The discussions since my post has been excellent. -HMC]
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jess Winfield <
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Date: Thursday, 21 May 2009 12:56:10 -0700
Subject: 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
Comment: Re: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
Bob Grunman says, "the man in the portrait could easily be 46. Some
people stay young, especially if slightly idealized by a painter."
The grasping at straws "idealization" issue aside --
Some people may stay young, but unless we are to cast aside Droeshout
and the monument entirely, we can see that Shakespeare did not. As men
do, he got bald, then balder and paunchy, then died. Cobbe man
transforming to Monument man in just six years seems inconceivable to
me. The argument that Cobbe could itself be a copy of an earlier
painting, well, there's a can of worms. It's possible, but highly
speculative, and obviates any claim that it was painted "from life."
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Stanley Wells <
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Date: Friday, 22 May 2009 15:17:01 +0100
Subject: 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
Comment: RE: SHK 20.0255 New Portrait of Shakespeare?
As I have been closely involved in claims for the Cobbe portrait I have
tried not to participate excessively in the internet discussion, but
since Professor Katherine Duncan-Jones's TLS article has been invoked by
several readers, it seems only fair to make available a published reply
to it written by Mark Broch, Dr Paul Edmondson, and me, along with a
letter which the TLS chose not to publish from the curator of pictures
of the National Trust.
+++++++
Sir,
Katherine Duncan-Jones attempts to revive David Piper's ill-founded
suggestion of 1964 and 1982 that the Cobbe portrait portrays not William
Shakespeare but Sir Thomas Overbury. Piper claimed that an 'early
inventory' of the Ellenborough collection, sold in 1947, 'lists a
portrait of Overbury'; but his reference leads to a list of pictures
belonging to the Delabere family. No portrait of Overbury is recorded in
the Ellenborough collection, and Piper merely footnoted the fact that
their portrait was sold with a traditional identification as Shakespeare.
Duncan-Jones, noting resemblance, suggests that the Cobbe copies the
Bodleian portrait. No art historian has made this claim; the different
compositions make it extremely unlikely. The doublets are completely
different, and direct examination reveals a cloak over Overbury's left
shoulder. Unlike engravers, painters normally copied faithfully. In any
case, perceived resemblance unsupported by documentary evidence is a
naive (though natural) basis for identification. Different people can
look alike. De Critz's portrait of Sir Walter Cope, for example, bears
an uncanny resemblance to Van Somer's of James I. Anyhow Overbury's nose
is more beaky, his chin jutting, and his neck thicker. Overbury was
notorious; it would be astonishing if none of the numerous versions had
come down without his name.
We do not merely 'claim' the Cobbe as the original of four surviving
copies; this has been conclusively demonstrated through independent
scientific investigation. It is not true that we provide 'no dates or
sources' for the 'long traditions' that the portrait represents
Shakespeare; they are discussed at length in the exhibition guide, which
Duncan-Jones saw. The major source of the tradition is the Janssen (or
Folger) portrait, altered early to reduce the hair, as recorded in a
copy of around 1630 which belonged to the 1st Marquess of Dorchester
(1606 -- 1680).
The Folger portrait has been 'altered' not 'at various times', only
once. When this alteration -- removed in 1988 - was discovered in the
1940s, it was assumed to have been made to enhance a likeness to the
Droeshout engraving. Our discovery that the alteration was early
re-authenticates the Folger as a genuine portrait of Shakespeare,
updated within living memory of him.
The inscription includes an exclamation mark, according to Duncan-Jones
'highly unusual'. But there is one in, for instance, an inscription on
Thomas Jenner's 1622 engraving of the family of James I. Duncan-Jones
claims that 'the man portrayed . . . appears far too grand and
courtier-like to be Shakespeare.' But 'Master William Shakespeare's'
family had a coat of arms, displayed on his monument and his daughter
Susanna's seal. From the age of 33 he owned a grand house in Stratford,
where he bought 107 of acres of land for ?320 in 1602, two years later
paying ?440 for an interest in the tithes and in 1613 ?140 for the
Blackfriars Gatehouse . His will is that of a wealthy man, his memorial
elaborate. His colleague and collaborator, John Fletcher, was no less
splendidly portrayed in 1620 .
Duncan-Jones thinks the man in the picture looks younger than 46. But
inscribed ages frequently differ from what appearance might suggest:
another fresh-faced 46-year-old is William Sheldon, painted by
Hieronymus Custodis in 1590. Portrait painters flattered. Attempting to
deny the portrait's wide dissemination she says 'A single 1770 mezzotint
of "Shakespeare" derives from the "Folger" portrait . . . but that
seems to be all.' It is not. The Folger Shakespeare Library owns a copy
of c. 1770, the Staunton portrait, and an early 19th-century copy after
the mezzotint; a copy on canvas was engraved in 1824; another of about
1763-64 belonged to the Duke of Anhalt; M. H. Spielmann discussed
others, most now untraced, in articles for The Connoisseur in 1910 and
1912. The composition spawned many engravings during the later 18th and
19th centuries. Even the Chandos portrait of Shakespeare in the National
Portrait Gallery seems to have generated fewer early copies.
Duncan-Jones waves away our suggestion that the Cobbe portrait was the
basis for Droeshout's 1623 engraving, where the sitter is only slightly
less richly dressed. Certainly Droeshout (aged twenty-two) appears to
have simplified the image, updated the collar, and given Shakespeare
less hair, possibly reflecting his later appearance. He was keen enough
to catch the cast in Shakespeare's left eye, not present in the Overbury
portrait. But engravers commonly simplified and updated; the Droeshout
was copied for Benson's 1640 Poems with equally drastic changes.
Compositionally the 1623 engraving and the Cobbe portrait match perfectly.
Duncan-Jones ignores most of the recently unearthed evidence on this
fascinating portrait. Her recycling of flawed twentieth-century
arguments does nothing to diminish our case, based on much earlier
evidence, that the portrait represents Shakespeare.
Mark Broch, Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells
**********
To:
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From: Alastair Laing
Date: 17 April 2009 19:17
Subject: Portraits of Shakespeare
Sir,
Erin Blake's letter (Letters, April 17) once again raises the
possibility - first proposed only in 1964 by David Piper apropos of the
Ellenborough copy traditionally identified as a portrait of Shakespeare
-- that the 'Janssen' portrait in her care in the Folger Shakespeare
Library -- and so, a fortiori, the newly-revealed original of that in
the Cobbe collection -- is a portrait of Sir Thomas Overbury. She does
so on the most treacherous grounds -- in the absence of any other
evidence -- for the identification of any portrait: those of apparent
likeness. She goes even further, to suggest that Droeshout might have
resorted -- but why ever should he have done such a thing ? -- to a
portrait of Overbury for elements of his posthumous portrait of
Shakespeare. There are, however, in fact clear difference between the
features of the sitter in the well-attested portrait of Overbury in the
Bodleian Library and those of the sitter in the Cobbe portrait. This was
recently confirmed by laying a tracing of the former over the latter.
What has bedevilled all consideration of the portraiture of Shakespeare
is that almost everyone has worked backward from the Droeshout engraving
of 1623, and from the bust on Shakespeare's monument in Holy Trinity,
Stratford-upon-Avon. Yet each of these is a posthumous image, and so
must either have been an invented likeness, based on memories of him, or
have taken his features from some lost original or originals of which we
have no knowledge. That it is almost certainly the former that is the
case, is demonstrated by the fact that not only is there neither trace
nor record of such an original or originals, but that there is also not
a single surviving copy of it or them. That there was a demand for
portraits of Shakespeare ever since the beginning of the seventeenth
century is clear. In the case of the later monument and print, however,
what was doubtless wanted was what there may well have been no model
for: a likeness of him as people remembered him, in older age.
A true ad vivum portrait of Shakespeare in earlier life is likely to be
one of which there are a number of early copies. Not only does the Cobbe
portrait meet that requirement, it alone has a provenance that plausibly
connects it, if not with the poet himself, at least with his patron, the
Earl of Southampton. It is such arguments, not the fragile ones of
imagined likeness, that should carry most weight when the identification
of the portrait of any celebrated figure is in question.
Alastair Laing
Curator of Pictures & Sculpture
The National Trust
_______________________________________________________________
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Hardy M. Cook,
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