National Trust’s ‘first Shakespeare painting’ is not to be
Merchant of Venice scene unearthed in Netherlands predates Hogarth’s work depicting The Tempest ‘Antonio is gently restraining Bassanio. Shylock has his knife out, ready to take his pound of flesh’
THE National Trust has long described its 1730s William Hogarth picture inspired by The Tempest as “the first known painting of a scene f rom Shakespeare”. That claim has been overturned by the significant discovery of a 1720s picture inspired by The Merchant of Venice.
It was painted by Pieter Angellis, a Flemish artist who worked in London and whose paintings are in the National Portrait Gallery and other public collections. A London dealer found it in the Netherlands, where it had been wrongly attributed. Traces of Angellis’s signature emerged during its restoration.
The attribution has been confirmed by Prof Robin Simon, a leading expert in British art and literature, who said: “It shows the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice, where Shylock asks for his pound of flesh, a pivotal moment of the play. It’s wonderfully painted.”
He added: “There can be no doubt that this is the first surviving history picture painted after a text of Shakespeare.
“It precedes in date the painting that has properly, until now, been identified as the first painting after an original Shakespeare text, Hogarth’s scene from The Tempest.”
The painting, an oil on canvas measuring 30in x 25in, has been dated to around 1720.
It was probably painted in London, where the artist worked for at least a decade until 1727. He died in 1734 in France, heading back to England.
The National Trust’s Hogarth painting, Ferdinand courting Miranda (from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Act I scene ii), hangs at Nostell Priory, its Palladian house near Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
Prof Simon, visiting professor at University College London, said: “We know that Hogarth studied Shakespeare’s text directly, because at the time The Tem
pest was only ever played in the form of a musical, with a text by Dryden and Davenant, in which this scene does not appear.
“Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice
was never performed on the early 18thcentury stage. It only appeared in the form of an adaptation, as George Granville’s The Jew of Venice ( 1701).”
In his book, Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick: Plays, Painting and Performance, Prof Simon writes that Angellis’s painting does not illustrate the trial scene as it appears in Granville’s play but follows Shakespeare’s original text.
He wrote: “Stage right is Bassanio, holding his purse out to Shylock in his red cap, as he offers to pay even 10 times the amount of ducats demanded.
“Antonio in black, next to him, is gently restraining Bassanio. Shylock has his knife out, ready to take his pound of flesh. The interior is intended to evoke the gilded splendour of … the Doge’s Palace, Venice.”
Shakespeare, Hogarth and Garrick: Plays, Painting and Performance, by Robin Simon, is published by Paul Holberton Publishing next month.