Is Shakespeare portrait bogus or the real deal?
SHAKESPEARE experts say they are “sceptical” a painting owned by a window cleaner is a genuine portrait of the Bard.
Steven Wadlow is sending ripples through the art world by claiming a picture which hung in his living room for decades, has been authenticated as the real deal.
He believes it’s the only portrait of Shakespeare painted while the playwright was still alive.
And one expert has told him, if proven to be Shakespeare, it could be worth £200 million.
The oil painting, said to show the Bard aged 31 with hair and no beard, belonged to Mr Wadlow’s antique dealer father who bought it for £900 from art restorers working on the Great Tew estate in the 1960s.
It was only after watching an episode of Time Team about Stratford, his father became convinced the painting was a genuine portrait of the poet, used as the model for the earliest engraving of Shakespeare which appeared on the first folio of his plays printed in 1623.
Mr Wadlow said: “One night over 11 years ago, mum and dad were watching a programme about Stratford when they noticed a painting with a familiar face.
“My dad phoned me the next day and said: ‘I think the painting in the corner might be Shakespeare’.
“Like my painting, it was oil on panel and like my painting was painted in 1595 and 1595 would be very convenient, because in 1595 Shakespeare was 31.”
In his decade-long quest to prove it’s genuine, Aylesbury-based Mr Wadlow has spent thousands having it tested and examined by experts. This includes cutting-edge facial recognition technology and taking it to Paris to have it tested by technology company Lumiere which uses a multi-spectral technique.
Jean Penicaut, head of Lumiere, reckons Steven’s portrait shows Shakespeare acting a role in one of his own plays and he believes it was the model for the iconic engraving.
In 2015 Lumiere claimed its tech, which uses reflective light technology, had uncovered a portrait underneath the existing Mona Lisa painting but this was never fully accepted by mainstream art experts.
Sadly for Mr Wadlow, most art experts and historians are still not convinced his portrait is the genuine article.
“You feel like you’re banging your head against a wall or trying to get through closed doors because you're not part of the establishment,” Mr Wadlow said.
He added: “I suppose, if I’m being totally honest, it has become a bit of an obsession, the obsession to prove some people wrong.
“If I’d have known 10 years ago, we'd still be at it now, trying to find answers.
“Would I have begun all this? Probably not, to be honest.”
Tiffany Stern, professor of Shakespeare and early modern drama and deputy director (research) at Birmingham University’s Shakespeare Institute based in Stratford, told the Herald: “The portrait that has been found shows a man with head angled slightly to the right and eyes to the left: a standard profile that matches that of the Folio engraving of Shakespeare (and all claims to be the portrait behind the Folio image).
“Its sitter has an earring, an extravagant lace rebato (collar), bouffant hair, a lazy left eye; Shakespeare in the Folio picture has no earring, a plain rebato, a balding head and matching eyes.
“The shield at the top right of the portrait is not Shakespeare’s.
“I remain sceptical”.
