[290] Mr. Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery, who has ittle doubt of the genuineness of the picture, gave an interesting account of it at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 12, 1895. Mr. Cust’s paper is printed in the Society’s Proceedings, second series, vol. xvi. p. 42. Mr. Salt Brassington, the librarian of the Shakespeare Memorial Library, has given a careful description of it in the Illustrated Catalogue of the Pictures in the Memorial Gallery, 1896, pp. 78-83.
[291a] Harper’s Magazine, May 1897.
[291b] Cf. Evelyn’s Diary and Correspondence, iii. 444.
[291c] Numberless portraits have been falsely identified with Shakespeare, and it would be futile to attempt to make the record of the pretended portraits complete. Upwards of sixty have been offered for sale to the National Portrait Gallery since its foundation in 1856, and not one of these has proved to possess the remotest claim to authenticity. The following are some of the wholly unauthentic portraits that have attracted public attention: Three portraits assigned to Zucchero, who left England in 1580, and cannot have had any relations with Shakespeare—one in the Art Museum, Boston, U.S.A.; another, formerly the property of Richard Cosway, R.A., and afterwards of Mr. J. A. Langford of Birmingham (engraved in mezzotint by H. Green); and a third belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who purchased it in 1862. At Hampton Court is a wholly unauthentic portrait of the Chandos type, which was at one time at Penshurst; it bears the legend ‘Ætatis suæ 34’ (cf. Law’s Cat. of Hampton Court, p. 234). A portrait inscribed ‘ætatis suæ 47, 1611,’ belonging to Clement Kingston of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was engraved in mezzotint by G. F. Storm in 1846.
[292] In the picture-gallery at Dulwich is ‘a woman’s head on a boord done by Mr. Burbidge, ye actor’—a well-authenticated example of the actor’s art.
[296a] It is now the property of Frau Oberst Becker, the discoverer’s daughter-in-law, Darmstadt, Heidelbergerstrasse 111.
[296b] Some account of Shakespeare’s portraits will be found in the following works: James Boaden, Inquiry into various Pictures and Prints of Shakespeare, 1824; Abraham Wivell, Inquiry into Shakespeare’s Portraits, 1827, with engravings by B. and W. Holl; George Scharf, Principal Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864; J. Hain Friswell, Life-Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864; William Page, Study of Shakespeare’s Portraits, 1876; Ingleby, Man and Book, 1877, pp. 84 seq.; J. Parker Norris, Portraits of Shakespeare, Philadelphia, 1885, with numerous plates; Illustrated Cat. of Portraits in Shakespeare’s Memorial at Stratford, 1896. In 1885 Mr. Walter Rogers Furness issued, at Philadelphia, a volume of composite portraits, combining the Droeshout engraving and the Stratford bust with the Chandos, Jansen, Felton, and Stratford portraits.
[297] Cf. Gentleman’s Magazine, 1741, p. 105.
[298] A History of the Shakespeare Memorial, Stratford-on-Avon, 1882; Illustrated Catalogue of Pictures in the Shakespeare Memorial, 1896.
[299] This was facsimiled in 1862, and again by Mr. Griggs in 1880.