Part 20 (1/2)

Of the sah less closely rese it than the picture just described, is the 'Ely House'

portrait (now the property of the Birthplace Trustees at Stratford), which fored to Thomas Turton, Bishop of Ely, and it is inscribed 'AE 39 x 1603' {291a} This painting is of high artistic value The features are of a far more attractive and intellectual cast than in either the Droeshout painting or engraving, and the many differences in detail raise doubts as to whether the person represented can have been intended for Shakespeare Experts are of opinion that the picture was painted early in the seventeenth century

Early in Charles II's reign Lord Chancellor Clarendon added a portrait of Shakespeare to his great gallery in his house in St James's Mention is made of it in a letter from the diarist John Evelyn to his friend Samuel Pepys in 1689, but Clarendon's collection was dispersed at the end of the seventeenth century and the picture has not been traced {291b}

Later portraits

Of the nus which have been described as portraits of Shakespeare, only the 'Droeshout' portrait and the Ely House portrait, both of which are at Stratford, bear any definable rese or the bust in the church {291c} In spite of their admitted imperfections, those presentments can alone be held indisputably to have been honestly designed to depict the poet's features Theyof the genuineness of other portraits clai to be of an early date

The 'Chandos' portrait

Of other alleged portraits which are extant, theis the 'Chandos' portrait, now in the National Portrait Gallery Its pedigree suggests that it was intended to represent the poet, but nuences from the authenticated likenesses show that it was painted from fanciful descriptions of his adorn the ears Oldys reported that it was froe, Shakespeare's fellow-actor, who had soed to Joseph Taylor, an actor contemporary with Shakespeare These rumours are not corroborated; but there is no doubt that it was at one tied successively to the actor Betterton and to Mrs

Barry the actress In 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller ift for Dryden After Mrs Barry's death in 1713 it was purchased for forty guineas by Robert Keck, a barrister of the Inner Teth it reached the hands of one John Nichols, whose daughter es, third duke of Chandos In due time the Duke became the owner of the picture, and it subsequently passed, through Chandos's daughter, to her husband, the first Duke of Buckinghaham and Chandos, sold it with the rest of his effects at Stowe in 1848, when it was purchased by the Earl of Ellesmere

The latter presented it to the nation Edward Capell h Barret to Trinity College, Cae, and other copies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias Hue Vertue in 1719 for Pope's edition (1725), and often later, one of the best engravings being by Vandergucht

A good lithograph froe Scharf was published by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery in 1864 The Baroness Burdett-Coutts purchased in 1875 a portrait of sied to John lord Lumley, who died in 1609, and to have forreat men of his day at his house, Lumley Castle, Durham Its early history is not positively authenticated, and it may well be an early copy of the Chandos portrait The 'Luraphed in 1863 by Vincent Brooks

The 'Jansen' portrait

The so-called 'Jansen' or Janssens portrait, which belongs to Lady Guendolen Rahter of the Duke of Somerset, and is now at her residence at Bulstrode, was first doubtfully identified about 1770, when in the possession of Charles Jennens Janssens did not coland before Shakespeare's death It is a fine portrait, but is unlike any other that has been associated with the dramatist An admirable mezzotint by Richard Earlom was issued in 1811

The 'Felton' portrait

The 'Felton' portrait, a sh and very bald forehead (belonging since 1873 to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts), was purchased by S Felton of Drayton, Shropshi+re, in 1792 of J Wilson, the owner of the Shakespeare Museum in Pall Mall; it bears a late inscription, 'Gul Shakespear 1597, R B' [_ie_ Richard Burbage] It was engraved by Josiah Boydell for George Steevens in 1797, and by Jale for Isaac Reed's edition in 1803 Fuseli declared it to be the work of a Dutch artist, but the painters Rolish workmanshi+p of the sixteenth century Steevens held that it was the original picture whence both Droeshout and Marshall s, but there are practically no points of resemblance between it and the prints

[Picture: Plaster-cast of bust of William Shakespeare]

The 'Soest' portrait

The 'Soest' or 'Zoust' portrait--in the possession of Sir John Lister-Kaye of the Grange, Wakefield--was in the collection of Thoht, painter, of Covent Garden in 1725, when John Siraved it

Soest was born twenty-one years after Shakespeare's death, and the portrait is only on fanciful grounds identified with the poet A chalk drawing by John Michael Wright, obviously inspired by the Soest portrait, is the property of Sir Arthur Hodgson of Clopton House, and is on loan at the Memorial Gallery, Stratford