The “faked” portraits have been at times as ardently accepted as
those with some solid claim to consideration. The “Shakespeare
Marriage picture,” with its rhyming confirmatory “tag” intended
as an inscription, was discovered in 1872. It is a genuine Dutch
picture of man and wife weighing out money in the foreground—a
frequent subject—while through the open door Shakespeare and,
presumably, Ann Hathaway are seen going through the ceremony of
handfasting. The inscription and the Shakespeare head (probably
the whole group) are fakes. The “Rawson portrait,” inscribed with
the poet’s name, is faked; it is really a beautiful little portrait of
Lord Keeper Coventry by Janssen. The “Matthias Alexander
portrait” shows a modern head on an old body. The “Belmount
Hall portrait” with its pseudo-Garrick MS. inscription on the back,
is in the present writer’s opinion not the genuine thing which it
claims to be. It represents the poet looking up from his literary
work. In the early part of the 19th century two clever “restorers,”
Holder and Zincke, made a fairly lucrative trade of fabricating
spurious portraits of Shakespeare (as well as of Oliver Cromwell and
Nell Gwynn) and the clumsiness of most of them did not impede a
ready sale. The way in which they imposed upon scholars as well as
on the public is marvellous. Many of these impudent impostures
won wide acceptance, sometimes by the help of the fine engravings
which were made of them. Such are the “Stace” and the “Dunford
portraits”—so named after the unscrupulous dealers who put them
forward and promulgated them. They have both disappeared, but
of the latter a copy is still in existence known as the “Dr Clay
portrait.” The former is based upon the portrait of Robert Carr,
earl of Somerset. These are the two “Winstanley portraits,” the
“Bishop Newton,” the “Cygnus Avoniæ” the “Norwich” or
“Boardman,” the “Bellows” or “Talma” portraits—most of them,
as well as others, traceable to one or other or both of the enterprising
fakers already named. At least a dozen are reinforced, as corroborative
evidence, with verses supposed to issue from the pen of
Ben Jonson. These are all to be attributed to one ready
pseudo-Elizabethan writer whose identity is known. With these pictures,
apparently, should be ranged the composition, now in
America, purporting to represent Shakespeare and Ben Jonson
playing chess.
The “fancy-portraits” are not less numerous. The 18th-century small full-length “Willett portrait” is at the Shakespeare Memorial. It is a charmingly touched-in little figure. There are many representations of the poet in his study in the act of composition they include those by Benjamin Wilson (Stratford Town Hall), John Boaden, John Faed, R.A., Sir George Harvey, R.S.A., C. Bestland, B. J. N. Geiger, and the painter of the Warwick Castle picture, &c.; others have for subject Shakespeare reading, either to the Court or to his family, by John Wood, E. Ender, R. Westall, R.A., &c.; or the infancy and childhood of Shakespeare, by George Romney (three pictures), T. Stothard, R.A., John Wood, James Sant, R.A.; Shakespeare before Sir Thomas Lucy, by Sir G. Harvey, R.S.A., Thomas Brooks, A. Chisholme, &c. These, and kindred subjects such as “Shakespeare’s Courtship,” have provided infinite material for the industry and ingenuity of Shakespeare-loving painters.
The engraved portraits on copper, steel, and wood are so numerous—amounting to many hundreds—that it is impossible to deal with them here; but one or two must be referred to, as they have genuine importance and interest. Vertue and Walpole speak of an engraved portrait by John Payne (fl. 1620, the pupil of Simon Pass and one of the first English engravers who achieved distinction); but no such print has even been found and its existence is doubted. Walpole probably confounded it with that by W. Marshall, a reversed and reduced version of the Droeshout, which was published as frontispiece to the spurious edition of Shakespeare’s poems (1640). It is good but hard. An admirable engraving, to all but expert eyes unrecognizable as a copy, was made from it in 1815, and another later. William Faithorne (d. 1691) is credited with the frontispiece to Quarles’s edition of “The Rape of Lucrece, by William Shakespeare, gent.” (1655). It was copied for Rodd by R. Sawyer and republished in 1819. It represents the tragic scene between Tarquin and Lucrece, and above is inset an oval medallion, being a rendering of the Droeshout portrait reversed. The earliest engravings from the Chandos portrait are of interest. The first by L. du Guernier (Arlaud type) and that by M. (father of G.) van der Gucht are introduced into a pleasing composition. The same elaborate design was adopted by L. van der Gucht. These, like Vertue’s earlier prints, look to the left; subsequent versions are reversed. Perhaps the most celebrated, partly because it was the most important and technically the finest, up to that time, is the large engraving (to the right) by Houbraken, a Dutchman, done for Birch’s “Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain” published by T. and P. Knapton (1747–1752). This free rendering of the Chandos portrait is the parent of the numerous engravings of “the Houbraken type.” Since that date many plates of a high order, from all the principal portraits, have been issued, many of them extremely inaccurate.
Numerous portraits in stained glass have been inserted in the windows of public institutions. Typical of them are the German Chandos windows by Franz Mayer (Mayer & Co.) at Stationers' Hall, and in St Helens, Bishopsgate (Professor Blaim); and that of the Droeshout type in the great hall of the City of London school. Madox Brown’s design is one of the best ever executed.
We now come to the sculptured memorials. After Gerrard Johnson’s bust no statuary portrait was executed until 1740, when the statue in Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey, was set up by public subscription, mainly through the enthusiastic activity of the earl of Burlington, Dr Richard Mead, and the poet Pope. It was designed or “invented” by William Kent and modelled and carried out by Peter Scheemakers; what is, as Walpole said, “preposterous” about it—mainly the pedestal with its incongruous heads—may be credited to the former, and what is excellent to the latter. It is good sculpture, and is interesting as being the first sculptured portrait of the poet based upon the Chandos picture. Lord Pembroke possesses a replica of it. A free repetition, reversed and with many changes of detail, is erected in a niche on the exterior wall of the town-hall of Stratford-on-Avon. A copy of it in lead by Scheemakers' pupil, Sir Henry Cheere, used to stand in Drury Lane theatre. Wedgwood copied this work, omitting the absurdities of the pedestal, with much spirit in black basalt. The marble copy, much simplified, in Leicester Square, is by Fontana, a gift to London by Baron Albert Grant. Busts were executed by Scheemakers, founded on the same portrait. One is still at Stowe in the “Temple of British Worthies,” and in Lord Cobham’s possession is that presented by Pope to Lord Lyttelton. Some very fine engravings of the monument have been produced, the most important that in Boydell’s Shakespeare (larger edition). By L. F. Roubiliac, Cheere’s protégé, is the statue which in 1758 David Garrick commissioned him to carve and which he bequeathed to the British Museum. It is also based upon the Chandos portrait. The terra-cotta model for the statue is in the Victoria and Albert Museum; and a marble reproduction of it is in private hands. To Roubiliac also must be credited the celebrated “D’Avenant Bust” of blackened terra-cotta in the possession of the Garrick Club. This fine work of art derives its name from having been found bricked up in the old Duke’s theatre in Portugal Row, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which 180 years before was d’Avenant’s, but which afterwards passed through various vicissitudes. It was again adapted for theatrical purposes by Giffard, for whom this bust, together with one of Ben Jonson which was smashed at the moment of discovery, must have been modelled by the sculptor, who at the same time was engaged on Garrick’s commission. The model for the British Museum statue is seen in the portrait of Roubiliac by Carpentiers, now in the National Portrait Gallery. Another portrait of Shakespeare is in Westminster Abbey—a medallion based on the Chandos picture, introduced into Webber’s rather fantastic monument to David Garrick. An important alto-relievo representation of Shakespeare, by J. Banks, R.A., between the Geniuses of Painting and the Drama, is now in the garden of New Place, Stratford-on-Avon. It was executed for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, and was presented to the British Institution which afterwards occupied the premises; on the dissolution of that body it was given to Stratford by Mr Holte Bracebridge. It is a fine thing, but the likeness adheres to no clearly specified type. It has been excellently engraved in line by James Stow, B. Smith, and others, and was reproduced on the admirable medal by Küchler, presented by Boydell to every subscriber to his great illustrated edition of Shakespeare’s works. It is remarkable that Banks’s was the first British hand to model a portrait of the poet.
In more recent times numerous attempts have been made to reconstitute the figure of Shakespeare in sculpture. The most ambitious of these is the elaborate memorial group modelled and presented by Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower to Stratford and set up outside the Memorial Theatre in 1888. The large seated figure of Shakespeare is mounted on a great circular base around which are arranged the figures of Hamlet, Lady Macbeth, Prince Henry, and Falstaff. In 1864 J. E. Thomas modelled the colossal group of Shakespeare with attendant figures of Comedy and Tragedy that was erected in the grounds of the Crystal Palace, and in the same year Charles Bacon produced his colossal Centenary Bust, a reproduction of which forms the frontispiece to John H. Heraud’s Shakspere: His Inner Life (1865). The chief statues, single or in a group, in London still to be mentioned are the following: that by H. H. Armstead, R.A., in marble, on the southern podium of the Albert Memorial; by Hamo Thornycroft, R.A. (1871), on the Poets' Fountain in Park Lane; by Messrs Daymond on the upper storey of the City of London School, on the Victoria Embankment; and by F. E. Schenck, a seated figure, on the façade of the Hammersmith Public Library. The Droeshout portrait is the basis of the head in the bronze memorial by Professor Lanteri set into the wall on the conjectural site of the Globe Theatre (1909) and of the excellent bust by Mr C. J. Allen in the churchyard of St Mary the Virgin, Aldermanbury, in memory of Heminge and Condell (1896). A recumbent statue, with head of the Chandos type, was in preparation in 1910 for erection in the south aisle of Southwark Cathedral. Among statues erected in the provinces are those by Mr H. Pegram, A.R.A., in the building of Birmingham University (1908) and by M. Guillemin for Messrs Farmer and Brindley for the Nottingham University buildings.
Several statues of importance nave been erected in other countries. The bronze by M. Paul Fournier in Paris (presented by an English resident) marks the junction of the Boulevard Haussmann and the Avenue de Messine (1888). The seated marble statue by Professor O. Lessing was set up in Weimar by the German Shakespeare Society;
the sculptor has also modelled a couple of busts of a very personal