Chandos or monument?

[Tom Reedy]

In page 70 of "Searching for Shakespeare," Tarnya Cooper writes of the
Soest portrait that the "features of the sitter derive partly from the
Chandos portrait" and then discusses the differences, that it is "of a
younger man with a pensive gaze, elegant bone structure, and without
the bohemian earring . . . . The poet is thus reincarnated as an
introspective man of fine manners and sensitive disposition," and that
"the head of the portrait is highly individual." She gives none of the
purported correspondences between it and the Chandos.

She then recounts that Verute wrote in his notebook that Sir Peter
Lilly "got a dress from the play house and with that picture [a copy
after the Chandos] and a man found so much in likeness to the
countenance of Shakespear, he made a picture of him which still
remains in the Family of Clarges."

Now I don't know where she got that the picture was a copy after
Chandos. Here's the complete quotation:

Sr. Walter Clarges, when Sr. Peter Lilly was Living had got a small
head or face only, of Shakespears picture and Sr. Peter at the request
of Sr. Walter got a dress from the play house and with that picture
and a man found so much in likeness to the countenance of Shakespear,
he made a picture of him which still remains in the Family of Clarges.

Nothing about the Chandos, and in fact, if you look at the picture,
the clothing seems to resemble the monument portrait more than the
Chandos, with a row of close buttons down the front and semi-epaulets
over the shoulders. the collar could conceivably be modeled after that
in the Chandos, but it matches the monument bust just as well.

Here's a link to the Soest: http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/SOEST.jpg

And another to the monument bust: http://www.hollowaypages.com/images/STRATF.JPG

A plaster cast of the monument bust at a different angle:
http://www.search.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk/engine/resource/exhibition/standard/default.asp?txtKeywords=plaster+cast&lstContext=&lstResourceType=&lstExhibitionType=&chkPurchaseVisible=&txtDateFrom=&txtDateTo=&originator=%2Fengine%2Fsearch%2Fdefault_hndlr.asp&page=&records=&direction=&pointer=5164&text=0&resource=9978

And finally one to the Chandos: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Shakespeare.jpg

TR

TR

[Roundtable]

Well, all I really see is that the clothes are the same.
They look really Puritan to me, but I'm not a historical
costume specialist.

I always thought the Droeshout engraving was a copy
of Chandos.

Melanie

> A plaster cast of the monument bust at a different angle:http://www.search.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk/engine/resource/exhibi...

[rita]

I'm not sure I understand exactly how the Soest was produced.
Vertue's quote implies Sir Walter Clarges had an existing small
portrait of Shakespeare (maybe based on the Chandos? though it doesn't
say so in your quote), and with that as a guide Sir Peter Lely found a
man who looked a lot like that small picture and used him for a model,
dressing him in some period costume he got from a playhouse.
Presumably it was costume that people in the 1660s thought was
authentic for dress of fifty years or so before.

Maybe Tarnya Cooper thinks the original 'small head or face only, of
Shakespears picture' Clarges had was a copy of the Chandos, so in some
way the Chandos is therefore the ultimate source for the Soest
image?

But I don't understand why Vertue talks about Lely as the artist when
the Soest portrait is presumably done by Gerard Soest?

Rita

> A plaster cast of the monument bust at a different angle:http://www.search.windowsonwarwickshire.org.uk/engine/resource/exhibi...

[Tom Reedy]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 3:09 PM, rita <rita...@googlemail.com> wrote:

I'm not sure I understand exactly how the Soest was produced.
Vertue's quote implies Sir Walter Clarges had an existing small
portrait of Shakespeare (maybe based on the Chandos? though it doesn't
say so in your quote), and with that as a guide Sir Peter Lely found a
man who looked a lot like that small picture and used him for a model,
dressing him in some period costume he got from a playhouse.
Presumably it was costume that people in the 1660s thought was
authentic for dress of fifty years or so before.

Maybe Tarnya Cooper thinks the original 'small head or face only, of
Shakespears picture' Clarges had was a copy of the Chandos, so in some
way the Chandos is therefore the ultimate source for the Soest
image?

But I don't understand why Vertue talks about Lely as the artist when
the Soest portrait is presumably done by Gerard Soest?

The Soest attribution was later. As far as I know, Malone was the first to publish the attribution in 1790 in his notes to Rowe's _Life_, although he didn't originate it: http://books.google.com/books?id=Q4crAAAAYAAJ&pg=PP8&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=0_0#PPA127,M1

TR
 

[rita]

Okay, check if I have all this straight.

The earliest reference (c. 1730-50?) to the Soest portrait of
Shakespeare is Vertue's anecdote in his notebooks (don't know the date
but before 1756 obviously when Vertue died). He gives the story as a
"Sir Walter Clarges" asking Sir Peter Lely to mock up a large portrait
of Shakespeare based on an existing small picture already in Clarges's
possession. Lely finds a live model who greatly resembles Shakespeare
(presumably using the small picture as guide?), borrows a costume from
the playhouse and does the painting.

1790: Malone refers to a different printed report by a Mr Granger to
the effect that a Sir Thomas Clarges (presumably the politician, d.
1695?) had a portrait of Shakespeare painted by Soest (d.1681), using
a live model who greatly resembled the poet. In his version of the
story Granger doesn't mention any existing small picture used as a
guide, where the Jacobean costume came from or how anyone knew the
live model was a dead ringer for Shakespeare. Malone then tracks
Granger's source for this dodgy anecdote to an anonymous contributor
to the Gentleman's Magazine of August 1759, who couldn't back his
assertion when it was challenged. Malone therefore considers it 'a
forgery' - but of course he isn't aware Vertue has earlier
independently recorded a version of the same anecdote, which would
have given it a bit more credibility. The story about some knight
with the last name of Clarges having a picture of Shakespeare painted
after the poet's death, and using a model who greatly resembled him,
is common to both Vertue and Granger.

Malone also refers to a mezzotint produced by a man called Simon in
1725, based on a Soest portrait owned by the painter Thomas Wright.
He, Malone, has recently seen a painting in the possession of a Mr
Douglas of Teddington, nr. Twickenham, and Malone is convinced this is
the original of the Simon mezzotint and therefore, presumably, is the
same painting earlier owned by Wright and done by Soest. It is about
24 inches by 20. Malone thinks it looks nothing like the Chandos.

What this all suggests to me is that a Soest painting came on the
market between 1695, when Sir Thomas Clarges died, and 1725, when it
was owned by Thomas Wright and being touted as a Shakespeare
portrait. And a story went with it, to explain how it was not a copy
of a vanished Shakespeare portrait but a historical reconstruction
done after his death and based on somebody who was his spit and
image. But the fact that Vertue, our earliest source, has apparently
been told the painting is by Lely - a much more expensive and
collectable artist than Soest - suggests somebody is already fudging
provenance details to make the picture seem more important than it
was.

The DNB entry on Sir Thomas Clarges doesn't mention any sons or heirs,
but he was a wealthy man and somebody must have inherited his
property. I can imagine in the years after Clarges's death his heirs
may have sold off his estate, paintings included, and so Thomas Wright
could have come into possession of what is clearly a Soest picture,
done from the life c. 1660, but of a man dressed in the costume of
1600. The Shakespeare identification and the back story for the
picture could then be pure invention: either clever sales talk by
somebody, or wishful thinking by Wright, or Wright realising he could
up the value of his painting quite a lot if it's said to be by Lely
not Soest, and a portrait of William Shakespeare rather than some
Unknown Man In Jacobean Dress.

So, I pretty much give up on this as a genuine portrait. Although it
is interesting that clearly, for whatever reason, Soest painted a
person in 1660 dressed in the costume of fifty years before. But was
it ever meant to be Shakespeare? I don't know.

Rita

On 22 Mar, 02:20, Tom Reedy <tom.re...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 3:09 PM, rita <rita.l...@googlemail.com> wrote:
>
> > I'm not sure I understand exactly how the Soest was produced.
> > Vertue's quote implies Sir Walter Clarges had an existing small
> > portrait of Shakespeare (maybe based on the Chandos? though it doesn't
> > say so in your quote), and with that as a guide Sir Peter Lely found a
> > man who looked a lot like that small picture and used him for a model,
> > dressing him in some period costume he got from a playhouse.
> > Presumably it was costume that people in the 1660s thought was
> > authentic for dress of fifty years or so before.
>
> > Maybe Tarnya Cooper thinks the original 'small head or face only, of
> > Shakespears picture' Clarges had was a copy of the Chandos, so in some
> > way the Chandos is therefore the ultimate source for the Soest
> > image?
>
> > But I don't understand why Vertue talks about Lely as the artist when
> > the Soest portrait is presumably done by Gerard Soest?
>
> The Soest attribution was later. As far as I know, Malone was the first to
> publish the attribution in 1790 in his notes to Rowe's _Life_, although he

> didn't originate it:http://books.google.com/books?id=Q4crAAAAYAAJ&pg=PP8&source=gbs_selec...

> > > TR- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[PaulB]

The attribution to Soest dates from the first print of the picture. We
don't know where the attribution comes from, but it is taken as more
likely than Lely for stylistic reasons, and because there would be no
reason to attribute the work to Soest if there were not evidence to do
so at the time. This is standard art historical method regarding
attribution. Why did Vertue attribute it to Lely then? Probably
because Lely was the most famous of Restoration artists who worked in
broadly this style. The most obvious explanation is that Vertue's
informant did not know the artist, so Vertue went for the most likely
name from his point of view. It would be rather as though someone
attributed some anonymous Elizabethan sonnet to Shakespeare because he
hadn't heard of any other writers from the time. It looked like Lely
to him, just as much as anything in The Passionate Pilgrim sounds like
Shakespeare to most people.

So what does this tell us about the other things that Soest says? We
have to judge them on their merits and the evidence of the image
itself. The physiognomy strongly suggests that it was painted from a
real person because it does not conform to any known conventions of
the period. However, the pose of the face and the costume strongly
suggest an attempt to mimic an existing model. The only extant image
which corresponds to this model in the Chandos, of which we have good
evidence that was accepted as a depiction of WS and that it existed in
London at the time. It is very unlikely that Soest would have traipsed
all the way to Stratford to check out the monument there. Such
obsession with detailed research would not have been likely at the
time, and it is doubtful that the crummy Dugdale/Hollar print would
have detained him for very long. He would have been interested in a
realistic template and a method to modernise it. The evidence of the
Chesterfield and Soest portraits both point to the Chandos as the
extant model of WS's features. Both were 'updates' designed to create
an authentic image that was also suitably modernised and
sophisticated, which fits with the late 17th C view of WS as great
forebear of modern theatre who needed to be smoothed over and
civilised.

[PaulB]

to clarify a point: the Soest attribution dates from John Simon's 1725
mezzotint.

[Tom Reedy]

OK, that sounds like a more reasonable explanation.

TR