It was originally the property of Taylor, the player
(our poet’s Hamlet), by whom, or by Richard Burbage, it was painted.[8]
Taylor dying about the year 1653, at the advanced age of seventy,[9] left this picture by will to Davenant.[10] At the death of Davenant, who died intestate in 1663, it was bought, probably at a sale of his effects, by Betterton, the actor.
While in Betterton’s possession, it was engraved by Van der Gucht, for Rowe’s edition of Shakespeare, in 1709. Betterton dying without a will and in needy circumstances, his pictures were sold. Some were bought by Bullfinch, the printseller, who sold them again to a Mr. Sykes. The portrait of Shakespeare was purchased by Mrs. Barry, the actress, who afterwards sold it for forty guineas to Mr. Robert Keck, of the Inner Temple.
While in his possession, an engraving was made from it, in 1719, by Vertue, and it then passed to Mr. Nicholls, of Southgate, Middlesex, who acquired it on marrying the heiress of the Keck family.
The Marquis of Caernarvon, afterwards Duke of Chandos, marrying the daughter of Mr. Nicholls, it
then became his Grace’s property. When his pictures were sold at Stowe, in September, 1848, this portrait was purchased for three hundred and fifty-five guineas by the Earl of Ellesmere, who, in March, 1856, presented it to the Trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, in whose hands it still remains.
Notwithstanding this pedigree, the picture has been objected to on the ground that the dark hair and foreign complexion could never have belonged to our essentially English Shakespeare. Those who make this objection, seem to forget entirely the age of the portrait, and the fact that it is painted in oil and on canvas, a circumstance which of itself is quite sufficient, after the lapse of two centuries and a half, to account for the dark tone which now pervades it, to say nothing of the numerous touches and retouches to which it has been subjected at the hands of its various owners.
Notwithstanding the missing links of evidence, it seems to me that, having traced the picture back to the possession of Shakespeare’s godson, we have gone far enough to justify us in accepting it as an authentic portrait in preference to many others. For we cannot suppose that Sir William Davenant would retain in his possession until his death a picture of one with whom he was personally acquainted, unless he considered that it was sufficiently faithful as a likeness to remind him of the original.
On the score of pedigree, then, and because I believe that the only well-authenticated portrait (i.e., the Droeshout) represents Shakespeare as an actor, and not as a private individual, I have selected the Chandos portrait for my frontispiece.