Flower portrait a 19th cent fake
Paul Crowley
that recent tests (under Tanya Cooper of the
National Portrait Gallery) revealed the presence
of the pigment 'chrome yellow' in the Flower
Portrait.
This proves that it cannot have been painted
before 1814.
IMO (and I think in that of many others) it was
fairly obvious that it was no more than a crude
'upgrade' on the Folio portrait.
The National Portrait Gallery is planning an
exhibition of many Shakespeare portraits next
year. It is commissioning a thorough scientific
investigation of many of them in preparation
for this.
Paul.
Art Neuendorffer
---------------------------------------------------------------
THE PORTRAITS OF SHAKESPEARE [1911 Encycl.]
<< The first proof is conclusive evidence
against the contention that the Flower Portrait at the
Shakespeare Memorial Museum, Stratford-on-Avonthe gift of Mrs
Charles Flower (1895) and boldly entitled the Droeshout original is the
original painting from which the engraving was made, and is therefore
the actual life-portrait for which Shakespeare sat. This view was
entertained by many connoisseurs of repute until it was pointed out that
had that been the case the first proof, if it had been engraved from it,
would have resembled it in all particulars, for the engraver would have
merely copied the picture before him. Instead of that, we find that
several details in the proof the incorrect illumination, the small
moustache, the shape of the eyebrow and of the deformed ear, &c.have
been corrected in the painting, in which further improvements are also
imported. The conclusion is therefore irresistible. At the same time the
picture may possibly be the earliest painted portrait in existence of
the poet, for so far as we can judge of it in its present condition (it
was to some extent injured by fire at the Alexandra Palace) (M. H. S.)
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Art Neuendorffer
Toby Petzold
say what ISN'T fake about it.
Toby Petzold
http://neognostikos.net/blog
Art Neuendorffer
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/portraitsfaq.html
3) The Flower Portrait - Named for it owner, Sir Desmond Flower,
who donated it to the Shakespeare Museum in 1911. This painting
is probably a copy of the Droeshout portrait. Most scholars
classify he Flower portrait as a forgery made in the 18th century.
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/FLOWER.JPG
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4471515.stm
<<Chrome yellow paint, dating from around 1814,
had been found embedded in the [Flower] portrait.
"We now think the portrait dates back to around 1818 to 1840,
exactly the time when there was a resurgence of interest
in Shakespeare's plays," she added.>>
<<The Chandos Portrait and the Grafton Portrait, the other two
most well-known images of Shakespeare, are also being studied.>>
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe/2faces.htm
------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/etexts/si/app2.htm
OXFORD'S PORTRAIT AND THE DROESHOUT ENGRAVING
<<We have now before us what may prove to be the most sensational
piece of evidence that our investigations have so far yielded.
This is a picture known as the Grafton portrait of Shakespeare at 24.
The full particulars respecting it are narrated in a work on the
subject by Thomas Kay and published in 1915: the chief aim of the
book being to show the connection between this and another portrait
from which the Droeshout engraving was conceivably made.
http://www2.localaccess.com/marlowe/grafton.JPG
http://www3.telus.net/oxford/newsletters.jpg
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/SONNETS2.jpg
Now, until we can place an acknowledged portrait of the Earl of Oxford
alongside of it, we shall defer saying positively that this is actually
another portrait of him; but speaking from recollections of the other
we would say at first sight that it is so. The eye is at once arrested
again by the thin dark line on the upper lip that we noticed in Oxford's
portrait; there are all the features which we, noticed his portrait had
in common with the Droeshout engraving; and in those points in which the
older features of the Droeshout engraving differed from Edward de Vere
this one agrees with the latter. The probability that it is another
portrait of the Earl of Oxford is therefore very strong.
We now come to the startling facts. First of all, although the
portrait is that of a young man aged twenty-four, he is dressed as,
an aristocrat, and Stratfordianism is driven to invent far-fetched
explanations. Again under the 4 of his age there had been a 3, and again
more explanations have to be invented. Then, under the 8 in the date it
looks again as if there had been another 3, and authorities are quoted
to controvert it. Now as, the Earl of Oxford would be twenty-three in
the year 1573 these two alterations are two out of the three precise
alterations which would be necessary to make the, age and date in a
portrait of Edward de Vere agree with the particulars
for William Shakspere of Stratford.
In a word we have here probably (to be cautious for the present) a
portrait of the Earl of Oxford with particulars, altered to fit the
Stratford man: in which case our evidence is about as, complete as it
could be. The probability is, as a study of the work suggests, that this
portrait was placed before Droeshout as the basis for his engraving. We
would further add that the numbers were probably altered so that the
engraver need not be in the secret. The scrubbing to which the picture
has been subjected has brought up the numbers, from underneath.
That same scrubbing has, unfortunately, obliterated the high
lights on the nose of the portrait, thus altering its shape
and reducing its value for identification.
Note. - The Grafton portrait of Shakespeare has now been carefully
compared with the Welbeck portrait of Edward de Vere, and when proper
allowances are made for evident differences of artistic treatment and
skill, and for the denudation of high lights from the former, as well
as other disfigurements resulting from ill-usage to the picture, there
seems abundant justification for the point of view assumed in the above
argument. In our opinion the portrait of the Earl of Oxford has more
in common with both the Grafton portrait and the Droeshout engraving
than these two have with one another.>>
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SHAKESPEARE PORTRAITS
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/portraitsfaq.html
There are several portraits and miniatures of Shakespeare:
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/CHANDOS2.jpg
1) The Chandos Portrait - The Chandos portrait of Shakespeare is named
after its owners, the Dukes of Chandos. Some believe that Shakespeare's
friend and fellow actor Richard Burbage painted it and gave it to Joseph
Taylor, an actor with the King's Men. Taylor then left the painting to
William Davenant, the man who claimed to be Shakespeare's illegitimate
son. However, this theory cannot be supported with historical evidence.
The Chandos portrait was no doubt painted when Shakespeare was alive,
unlike the posthumous painting, the Droeshout. Some critics argue that
the painting cannot be of Shakespeare. In 1856 it became the property
of Britain's National Portrait Gallery.
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/DROES.JPG
2) The Droeshout Portrait - Created by the English engraver Martin
Droeshout, this picture appears on the cover of the First Folio, and is
one of only two images of the Bard considered genuine (the other being
the Stratford Monument). It is unlikely that Shakespeare posed for
Droeshout and the artist probably worked from another painting that
has long since disappeared.
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/FAITHORNE.JPG
4) The Faithorne Portrait - The Droeshout engraving was copied
by William Faithorne for the frontispiece of the 1655 edition
of the "Rape of Lucrece", and the
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/SONNETS2.jpg
5) Marshall Portrait was an imitation of the Droeshout portrait
for the cover of the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's Sonnets.
Both of these portraits embellished on the Droeshout,
introducing unrealistic details.
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/SOEST.jpg
6) The Soest Portrait - the Soest or Zoust portrait was owned by
Thomas Wright of Covent Garden in 1725 when it was engraved by
John Simon. The painting was created by Soest some 21 years
after Shakespeare's death and is primarily based
on his imagination as an artist.
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/hilliard.JPG
7) The Hilliard Miniature - This is the most popular of the Shakespeare
miniatures and was owned successively by the poet William Somerville,
Sir James Bland Burges, and Lord Nothcote. It is a wonderful work of
art, but it is not of much value as an authoritative representation
of Shakespeare.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
Paul Crowley
Shakespeare portrait 'is a fake'
The Flower Portrait bears the inscription 1609
The mystery surrounding a famous portrait of William
Shakespeare has been solved, say experts. Historians
have disagreed about the origins of The Flower Portrait,
which bears the inscription 1609.
Not everyone has been convinced that the portrait,
owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC),
was painted during the playwright's lifetime.
Now National Portrait Gallery experts in London confirm
it is a fake which dates back to the early 19th century.
RSC donation
BBC Two's The Culture Show was given unique access
to an investigation by the National Portrait Gallery and
revealed their findings on Thursday.
Scientific analysis shows that pigment embedded deep
into the painting comes from that period.
The image, which is painted on top of a 16th century
portrait of Madonna and child, was named after owner
Sir Desmond Flower, who donated it to the RSC.
Some said it was painted in a later style while others
strongly believed it was a lifetime portrait
It is one of three paintings being examined ahead of
next year's Searching for Shakespeare exhibition at the
National Portrait Gallery.
The Chandos Portrait and the Grafton Portrait, the other
two most well-known images of Shakespeare, are also
being studied.
The Flower Portrait was analysed for four months using
a combination of x-rays, ultraviolet examination, paint
sampling and microphotography.
Notoriety achieved
The gallery's 16th century curator Dr Tarnya Cooper said
the image could be found on the cover of a number of
Shakespeare editions found in book shops.
She said: "It achieved notoriety over the years.
Chrome yellow paint, dating from around 1814, had been
found embedded in the portrait.
"We now think the portrait dates back to around 1818 to
1840, exactly the time when there was a resurgence of
interest in Shakespeare's plays," she added.
The image bears a strong resemblance to the Droeshout
Engraving, which accompanied the first folio of
Shakespeare's works.
RSC curator David Howells said the portrait gave "great
insight" into the rebirth of interest in Shakespeare in the
19th century.
"Now we know the truth we can put the image in its proper
context in the history of Shakespearean portraiture,
alongside the other fascinating pieces in our collection in
Stratford," he said.
The portrait was lent to the RSC after it came to public
notice in 1892.
When the man who was lending out the portrait died, the
local Flower family purchased it and donated it to the RSC.
Searching for Shakespeare will commemorate the
National Portrait Gallery's 150th anniversary.
lar...@yahoo.com
Isn't there still always a possibility that it was an original painting
of Shakespeare, but was painted over after 1814? They didn't say how
embedded the chrome yellow was, and how they could tell it really was
chrome yellow if it was so embedded. I don't know anything about these
techniques or how good they are, but people should ask questions before
just accepting something that one gallery says.
C.
gangleri
people should ask questions before just accepting something that one
gallery says.
Comment:
Right on!
Just because Stratfordian Fundamentalists say it's so doesn't mean that
it's necessarily so.
What, then, is one to do?
Think for oneself!
David Kathman
> The BBC2 *Culture Show* tonight announced
> that recent tests (under Tanya Cooper of the
> National Portrait Gallery) revealed the presence
> of the pigment 'chrome yellow' in the Flower
> Portrait.
Sorry to be a stickler, but it's actually "Tarnya" Cooper, not "Tanya".
I met her in 2002 at the University of Toronto's symposium on the
Sanders portrait, where we were both speakers. She really knows her
stuff, and it's amazing how much one can tell by analyzing the chemical
composition of the paint in a painting.
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~reed/picturingshakespeare/bios.html
Dave Kathman
dj...@ix.netcom.com
Toby Petzold
latest discredit.
Toby Petzold
http://neognostikos.net/blog
lar...@yahoo.com
that has very little detail in it, it is healthy to ask questions, even
skeptical ones. I hope to read more on the subject, and it might be
controversial enough that others might want to do some tests on the
painting and verify for themselves.
C.
Tom Reedy
news:HrW9e.52022$Z14....@news.indigo.ie...
> The BBC2 *Culture Show* tonight announced
> that recent tests (under Tanya Cooper of the
> National Portrait Gallery) revealed the presence
> of the pigment 'chrome yellow' in the Flower
> Portrait.
>
> This proves that it cannot have been painted
> before 1814.
>
> IMO (and I think in that of many others) it was
> fairly obvious that it was no more than a crude
> 'upgrade' on the Folio portrait.
If I'm not mistaken (not having Schoenbaum's *Records and Images* to hand),
the Flower portrait has always been considered suspect since it first
appeared.
>
> The National Portrait Gallery is planning an
> exhibition of many Shakespeare portraits next
> year. It is commissioning a thorough scientific
> investigation of many of them in preparation
> for this.
It's about time.
TR
>
>
> Paul.
Paul Crowley
news:1114215741....@g14g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
>
> Isn't there still always a possibility that it was an original painting
> of Shakespeare, but was painted over after 1814? They didn't say how
> embedded the chrome yellow was, and how they could tell it really was
> chrome yellow if it was so embedded.
They did consider this -- and discussed it
in the BBC2 program. The chrome yellow
could theoretically have been part of a
later touching-up. But it's not; it's in the
main structure of the painting.
> I don't know anything about these
> techniques or how good they are, but people should ask questions before
> just accepting something that one gallery says.
Agreed. But in this case there is little
reason for suspicion. The portrait is, in
any real terms, a monstrosity -- a shallow
and unimaginative attempt at what the
Great Bard might have looked like if the
creator of the Folio portrait had somehow
been massively incompetent. The Flower
portrait is the painting of a fake -- and
could only have come from a foolish and
quite mistaken early 19th Century popular
'scholarship' -- which, unfortunately, is
still with us.
Paul.
Art Neuendorffer
> If I'm not mistaken (not having Schoenbaum's *Records and Images* to
hand),
> the Flower portrait has always been considered suspect since it first
> appeared.
----------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/faq/portraitsfaq.html
The Flower Portrait - Named for it owner, Sir Desmond Flower,
who donated it to the Shakespeare Museum in 1911. This painting
is probably a copy of the Droeshout portrait. Most scholars
classify he Flower portrait as a forgery made in the 18th century.
http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/FLOWER.JPG
----------------------------------------------------------------
Much more interesting will be the test on the Grafton
(which according to Oxfordians was done in 1573).
Art Neuendorffer
Mark Steese
news:iYrae.12343$lP1....@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net:
>> The BBC2 *Culture Show* tonight announced that recent tests (under
>> Tanya Cooper of the National Portrait Gallery) revealed the presence
>> of the pigment 'chrome yellow' in the Flower Portrait.
>>
>> This proves that it cannot have been painted before 1814.
>>
>> IMO (and I think in that of many others) it was fairly obvious that
>> it was no more than a crude 'upgrade' on the Folio portrait.
>
> If I'm not mistaken (not having Schoenbaum's *Records and Images* to
> hand), the Flower portrait has always been considered suspect since it
> first appeared.
Schoenbaum also discussed the Flower portrait in *Shakespeare's Lives* --
if I remember correctly, he effectively dismissed it as being obviously
derived from the Droeshout engraving. The painter perhaps wanted people to
think that his was the original work on which Droeshout's was based.
--
Mark Steese
Unscramble and underscore to email
----------------------------------
In our age, there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All
issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies,
evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. -George Orwell
Art Neuendorffer
> Schoenbaum also discussed the Flower portrait in *Shakespeare's Lives* --
> if I remember correctly, he effectively dismissed it as being obviously
> derived from the Droeshout engraving. The painter perhaps wanted people to
> think that his was the original work on which Droeshout's was based.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
_Arts, Briefly_ Compiled by LAWRENCE VAN GELDER
Published: April 23, 2005
<<On the day widely observed as the birthday of William Shakespeare - today,
April 23 - his true likeness continues to be elusive, especially now that
experts have called fake a familiar image thought to have been painted in
his lifetime (1564-1616). An investigation commissioned by the National
Portrait Gallery in London subjected the so-called Flower portrait,
frequently used to illustrate his plays, to examination by curators,
conservators and scientists. Their tests included X-rays, ultraviolet
examination, macro and micro photography, and the examination of microscopic
paint samples. These, the gallery said, revealed that although the portrait
is dated 1609, a pigment, chrome yellow, which became available only in the
early 19th century, was well integrated into the paint layers. As a result,
the National Portrait Gallery concluded, "It can be categorically stated
that Flower portrait of Shakespeare is a 19th-century painting." The
painting, which hangs at the Royal Shakespeare Company, based in
Stratford-on-Avon, is named for the Flowers family, who donated it to the
troupe. Research on it and two other images of Shakespeare, the Chandos
painting and the Grafton portrait, was undertaken in preparation for an
exhibition next year, "Searching for Shakespeare," to celebrate the National
Portrait Gallery's 150th anniversary. It says the results of new technical
analysis and research "will cast new light on the search for Shakespeare's
authentic appearance." PAM KENT
Isn't this an admission that the Droeshout isn't authentic? If we're still
searching?
They've admitted that the copy (Flower) isn't genuine, and look what it's a
copy of--are we not building up to *proof* that either the Grafton or the
Chandos are authentic?
Nothing much to celebrate otherwise.
Meantime let's recall that the NPG decided that a portrait of Mary Sidney
Herbert was no longer that lady sometime after (because?) the emblematic
nature of the picture was pointed out in an Oxfordian book. I've never read
a satisfactory explanation of that change, and never saw any other likeness
of the new supposed sitter: Mary Scudamore, one of two Mary's married to Sir
James Scudamore:
Sir James married Mary Houghton, daughter and coheir of Peter Houghton, a
London alderman, on 21 March 1597, and after her death in August 1598
married, shortly before 28 June 1599, Mary (d. 1632), widow of another of
Essex's captains, Sir Thomas Baskervile, and daughter of Sir Thomas
Throckmorton of Gloucestershire.
There are of course several likenesses of Mary Sidney Herbert, available
here:
http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/maryadd.htm
And here is the portrait that they changed their mind about:
http://www.npg.org.uk/live/OC_Data/images/weblg/8/3/mw05683.jpg
Note the cheverell glove turned inside out. Note the artist.
Here's what they say:
Little is known about Lady Scudamore, but this portrait appears to have been
commissioned to commemorate the marriage of her son John, later Viscount
Scudamore, to Elizabeth Porter of Dauntsey, Wiltshire. The date of the
wedding is inscribed top right. The motto, 'No Spring Till now', the wreath
of flowers, and Lady Scudamore's melancholic smile suggest the regeneration
and hope which the marriage must have represented within the family. Lady
Scudamore's pose, with one hand in her coat, is one used by the artist in a
number of portraits of women made at this time.
Personally, I think Mary has something else on her mind, but the above
conjecture seems far-fetched in any case.
NPG states that the painting is not on display now. It was at Montacute
House, along with the Welbeck portrait of De Vere, as well as portraits of
Horace (Horatio) Vere, Elizabeth, and Southampton.>>
------------------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer