More on the Wriothesley portrait
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Is Deceptive Portrait Tied to Shakespeare?
Mon May 6, 9:02 AM ET
By ALAN RIDING The New York Times
EAST CLANDON, England Upper-class English families frequently
inherit dusty portraits of forgotten ancestors, but Alec Cobbe's
Anglo-Irish forebears left him a richer legacy, a collection of
major works of art. It is now exhibited in two stately homes:
Newbridge House, outside Dublin, and Hatchlands Park, 30 miles
south of London. Some family portraits are also on display, but
in the company of Poussin and Luca Giordano they go largely
unnoticed.
One such portrait, identified by a faded sticker as "Lady Norton,
daughter of the Bishop of Winton," shows the face of someone in
her late teens with smooth skin, an eye-catching earring, long
hair, rosy cheeks and a cherry of a mouth. The work of an
anonymous painter, it served as a space filler at Newbridge, even
after an art expert concluded 10 years ago that "Lady Norton" was
in fact a young man. And it did not merit a place in a recent
exhibition of the Cobbe collection.
But now, after an intense two months of research, Mr. Cobbe says
he believes he has found the earliest extant portrait of Henry
Wriothesley, Third Earl of Southampton, Shakespeare's patron from
the early 1590's. Not only did Shakespeare dedicate his narrative
poems "Venus and Adonis" and "The Rape of Lucrece" to
Southampton, but he is also widely presumed to have made this
young noble the "fair youth" of his sonnets, perhaps even "the
master-mistress of my passion" of Sonnet 20.
The debate over Shakespeare's sexuality is 150 years old and will
hardly be resolved by this girlish-looking portrait of
Southampton. But the identification of the subject of this
painting, described by some British newspapers as "Southampton in
drag," has reawakened speculation over the possible bisexuality
of Shakespeare, who left his wife, Anne Hathaway, in
Stratford-Upon-Avon when he moved to London.
In one sense, though, there is less than meets the eye. While the
sonnets may or may not be autobiographical, experts say this
portrait does not show Southampton dressed as a woman. The first
noble of his generation to wear his hair long, Henry Wriothesley
was renowned as something of a dandy, but Mr. Cobbe argues that
red lips and pink cheeks were common to every Elizabethan
portrait. "Forget cross-dressing," he added. "These are not
women's clothes."
Still, it is easy to imagine that Southampton was all too aware
of the image he would convey with the delicate Italian lace
around his neck and sleeves, a provocative red-and-black earring
and his hand lifted to his heart as if to exhibit his delicate
fingers. Yet later portraits of Southampton, like those painted
when he was in prison in the Tower of London and when he was an
acclaimed military leader, also show him with long hair and
exquisite attire.
In his essay "Shakespeare's Sonnets," the poet W. H. Auden dwells
on Southampton's narcissism, noting that the young man probably
knew he had some power over Shakespeare but was unaware of the
intensity of feelings he aroused. Southampton gives the
impression, Auden writes, of being "a young man who was not
really very nice, very conscious of his good looks, able to
switch on the charm at any moment, but essentially frivolous,
cold-hearted and self-centered."
What makes this anonymous portrait of Southampton interesting,
then, is the belief that it shows him as he looked when he first
became Shakespeare's patron and, perhaps, the muse of the poet's
sonnets.
Mr. Cobbe, 57, himself a painter, restorer, designer and
musician, said he had long ignored the painting. However, before
the recent exhibition of the Cobbe collection at Kenwood House in
London, he had been studying his family tree and had spotted a
17th-century link to the Wriothesley family. Then, when he was
rehanging the paintings at Newbridge after the show, the
forgotten portrait lay on the floor. "I thought, hey, I've seen
this face before," he recalled. "Could it be the third Earl?
Let's clean it and investigate."
A resemblance to later portraits of Southampton can be seen
immediately in the man's long face, narrow upper lip, fuller
lower lip and slightly bulbous nose, and in his penchant for
displaying his hands and fingers, his hairline and indeed his
long hair, which, as in this portrait, often falls over his left
shoulder. Just as important to Mr. Cobbe, however, was to
establish a provenance that explained how the painting came into
his family's hands.
The sticker on the back of the canvas was placed there by Charles
Cobbe, archbishop of Dublin in the mid-18th century, who believed
it showed his great-grandmother, Lady Anne Norton. Mr. Cobbe,
however, has identified a direct link to the Wriothesleys through
the earl's great-granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Noel, who married
a Richard Norton. When the couple died childless, their property
went to Norton's cousin, Honor, who in turn married the
archbishop's grandfather.
Having determined to his satisfaction how the portrait entered
his family's collection three centuries ago, Mr. Cobbe obtained
confirmation of his finding from an old friend, Alastair Laing,
adviser on art and sculpture to the National Trust, the
conservation agency that leases Hatchlands Park to Mr. Cobbe. It
was Mr. Laing who first identified "Lady Norton" as a man.
The next step was to obtain the endorsement of the National
Portrait Gallery in London, but a problem arose. Catherine
MacLeod, a curator at the gallery, said the flat lace collar in
the portrait was an early-17th-century fashion, which suggested
that the portrait was painted no earlier than 1600. In that case,
it could not show Southampton, who by that date was 27.
"So I am inclined to think that this is probably not a portrait
of Southampton after all, but of some other very fashionable and
very young man of the early 17th century," Ms. MacLeod wrote to
Mr. Cobbe. "Are there any other candidates among the friends and
relatives of the Cobbe family?"
But Mr. Cobbe remained convinced. And as he and Mr. Laing pursued
their research, they came across a Vecello pattern book compiled
in 1591 that showed Italian lace patterns almost identical to
those worn by Southampton in the portrait. It now seemed
plausible to date the painting around 1592, when Southampton was
19. And they presented their new findings to Ms. MacLeod.
"It does indeed sound as though your evidence about the lace
collar removes my objection about the date and Southampton's
age," she conceded. Ever the scholar, though, she added, "My
inclination is naturally to err on the side of caution in matters
of this kind, but the Southampton identification certainly sounds
possible, and adds an extra dimension of interest to an already
interesting portrait."
With that, Mr. Cobbe contacted Anthony Holden, author of "William
Shakespeare: His Life and Work," who wrote about the portrait of
"Shakespeare's patron and possible lover" in The Observer of
London on April 21. When Mr. Holden visited Hatchlands to inspect
the painting, he was also accompanied by an old friend, Sir Frank
Kermode, the Shakespearean scholar.
"If you believe that the young man addressed in the sonnets was
Henry Wriothesley," Mr. Holden quoted Sir Frank as saying, "there
is the additional thrill that this could be the face that
Shakespeare fell in love with, perhaps wishing its owner was a
girl. The magnitude of the thrill depends on how much you think
the identity of the young person matters to the poems. Many think
it matters a lot."
Mr. Cobbe has now acquired a facsimile of the first edition of
the Sonnets, published in 1609, and he likes to turn to Sonnet 20
and wonder whether Shakespeare had his portrait in mind when he
wrote of "a woman's face with nature's own hand painted." But, he
admitted, until recently he had no more than a layman's
acquaintance with Shakespeare. "The only reason to put the story
in the press is to help the visitor flow to Hatchlands," he said.
Indeed, Hatchlands Park, an 18th-century mansion set on 420 acres
of parkland a few miles from Guildford, has more to offer,
including interiors designed by Robert Adam and scores of
artworks from the Cobbe collection. The highlight, though, is Mr.
Cobbe's collection of 44 keyboard instruments, including
harpsichords and virginals dating to the 17th century, which an
American patron, Donald Kahn, has helped maintain in playing
condition.
As part of a musical tour of the mansion, Mr. Cobbe springs from
one keyboard to another, playing excerpts of works by composers
who once used the very same instruments, among them Johann
Christian Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin, Elgar and
Mahler. (Visiting hours and other information about Hatchlands
can be found on the National Trust's Web site,
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/.
Now the public seems certain to include Shakespeare lovers
interested in studying the fine features of the youthful Third
Earl of Southampton. So, Mr. Cobbe said, there is no question of
selling the portrait. "It has been in the family for 300 years,"
he observed cheerfully. "It can stay a bit longer."
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