Grafton Portrait; news
bookburn
Last Updated: Friday, 28 October 2005, 00:42 GMT 01:42 UK
Famous portrait 'not Shakespeare'
Technical analysis has confirmed its date and
English origin
A portrait widely thought to be William Shakespeare is not
the playwright, the National Portrait Gallery has revealed.
The Grafton Portrait has been used on the covers of many
books on the Bard.
But nine months of research and restoration work have
failed to reveal any evidence to support the view that it is a
portrait of Shakespeare.
The gallery said it dates back to 1588 when Shakespeare
was 24, but at that stage he was unlikely to have been able to afford
the style of dress seen.
Contemporary man
Gallery experts said at that age he was about to join a
travelling theatre troupe and had just become a father to twins.
It follows confirmation in April that The Flower Portrait,
owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company, was a fake.
The Grafton Portrait was painted in oils by an anonymous
artist and shows a youth with curly brown hair and grey eyes, and is
dressed in a sumptuous silk or satin scarlet jacket worn by European
men between the 15th and 17th centuries.
The inscription on the top of the painting records the age
of 24 and the date as 1588, which would make the sitter the same age
as Shakespeare.
Manchester's John Rylands Library has loaned the portrait
to the gallery for restoration ahead of its Searching for Shakespeare
exhibition.
'Shakespeare in Love'
Dr Tarnya Cooper, 16th Century curator at the National
Portrait Gallery, said: "We believe that Shakespeare left
Stratford-upon-Avon following the birth of twins in 1585.
"One possibility is that he joined a travelling theatre
troupe and it is very unlikely that in 1588, Shakespeare would have
been able to afford a costume of this type."
She said the painting has not been looked at in a
systematic way before.
"But the painting has fuelled the kind of Shakespeare in
Love theories of the 21st Century, of a beautiful young man with a
sensitive and passionate face, of a character with an incredible
emotional range," she said.
The so-called Chandos portrait, which has been the subject
of fierce debate over whether it really features Shakespeare, is next
in line for examination.
The Culture Show broadcasts a report into this issue on
BBC Two on Saturday at 2315 BST.
bookburn
The Times October 29, 2005
I still believe that this man might be the 'bodger
of blank verse'
Peter Ackroyd
THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT Gallery has just announced
that a portrait of a young man known as the Grafton Portrait is not
that of William Shakespeare. It has thus exploded decades of what has
been considered to be speculation or wishful thinking.
It is interesting to note, however, that the gallery
have not come to this conclusion on the basis of scientific tests; the
experiments on paint, on canvas, or on the wooden frame, have not
yielded any negative results. The painting is undoubtedly of the late
16th century. The gallery has come to its conclusion simply on the
basis of biographical speculation, which is not perhaps the proper
sphere of the art expert. It has decided that in 1588, when the
portrait was completed, the 24-year-old Shakespeare was neither rich
nor famous enough to have been painted in an elaborate doublet of silk
or satin. I believe this to be quite mistaken. In my recent study
Shakespeare: The Biography, I came to the conclusion that by 1588 the
young Shakespeare was in exactly the position to have his portrait
painted as a relatively affluent and "coming" young man. Indeed I
think it almost inevitable that his portrait would have been painted.
The Grafton Portrait is named after the Duke of
Grafton, who is believed to have owned it in the early 18th century.
It was discovered in the possession of a northern family in the 1880s
and was eventually presented to the John Rylands University Library in
Manchester. It shows a fashionably dressed young man with expensive
doublet and collar. He has a slightly long face with what looks like a
close-cropped beard and a faint moustache; he has large expressive
eyes, a wide forehead and a full mouth.
Above the sitter are to be found the words "AE
SUAE.24" and then "1588". The sitter's age was, in other words, 24 in
the year 1588. That fits Shakespeare's case. On the back of the
portrait has been written W + S, an indication that someone, at some
time, believed the painting to be of Shakespeare. So why should the
experts of the National Portrait Gallery reject the attribution? They
do so on the ground that he was not wealthy enough to have
commissioned the work. It looks to have been the work of an amateur,
in any case, or one of those hired artists who could be found in
Southwark, Blackfriars and elsewhere. So it may not have been
altogether expensive.
But in my biography I have described how, by 1588,
Shakespeare had already written Titus Andronicus, an early, and
inferior, version of Hamlet, The Taming of A Shrew (later to be
transmogrified into The Taming of the Shrew) and The Troublesome
Raigne of King John (the forerunner of his more famous King John). He
was, in other words, a young dramatist who had already had remarkable
success with history plays, comedies and revenge tragedies. The year
after the portrait was painted he was being attacked by a rival as a
plagiarist and simpleton who could only "bodge up a blank verse with
ifs and ands". Shakespeare was already well known enough, and
successful enough, to attract carping critics. There is no reason,
then, to accept the National Portrait Gallery's description of him as
impoverished and anonymous. Quite the contrary.
The experts and scholars have done one service. They
have concluded that the paint and canvas do indeed date from 1588. The
portrait is not one of those fakes that occasionally emerge on to the
market as the true image of Shakespeare. They have also concluded that
the original age placed above the sitter was "23", which was then
changed to "24". This might seem ground for suspicion, suggesting that
there was some manipulation of dates. But they have also demonstrated
that the correction was made at the time. It was altered when the
portrait had just been completed, or was about to be completed. In
other words, someone noticed the mistake. This is more than likely to
have been the sitter himself.
There is one other clue to the identity of this
sitter. If you place the Grafton Portrait beside the famous Martin
Droeshout engraving of the older Shakespeare that adorns the First
Folio of Shakespeare's plays, you will see a remarkable resemblance
between the two physiognomies. Of course none of this is enough to
"prove" that the Grafton Portrait is that of Shakespeare. Proof is not
available in this case. All that can be said, with reasonable
certainty, is that the grounds for the disavowal of the painting by
the National Portrait Gallery are highly dubious. If you read my
biography, you will gather my reasons for thinking so. If you look at
the Grafton Portrait with unbiased eyes, it may be the face of
Shakespeare staring back at you.
