Explore the History of this artwork, Ashbourne portrait.
It was first brought to light by Clement Usill Kingston in 1847. Kingston was a schoolmaster at the Ashbourne School and amateur painter living in the town of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, after which the portrait came to be named. He wrote to Abraham Wivell, an authority on Shakespeare portraits, explaining the circumstances in which he claimed to have found it. According to Kingston, "a friend in London sent me word that he had seen a portrait of Shakespeare, that he was positive it was a genuine picture, and that the owner only valued it as being a very fine painting. Being too poor to purchase it himself, he advised me by all means to have it." He immediately purchased it. Kingston told Wivell that the design on the book held in the subject's hand was a combination of "the crest of the Shakespeare family and the tragic mask". After examining the work, Wivell enthusiastically endorsed it.
It was subsequently reproduced in mezzotint by G.F. Storm. In this form it was widely reproduced during the 19th century, having entered the canon of Shakespeare portraits. 
In 1910 M.H. Spielmann devoted two articles to a critical analysis of the portrait, with regard to provenance, attribution and identification. He dismissed Kingston's claim that the Shakespeare "family crest" could be seen on the book. He also rejected a suggestion that the subject was portrayed in the character of Hamlet. He concluded that the aristocratic nature of the portrait did not conform to Shakespeare's status as a playwright, and that the painting's historical subject was a mystery. However, he accepted that Shakespeare could be the portrait's subject.The painting was auctioned at Sotheby's in 1928, and sold for £1,000 ($5,000) to Eustace Conway, an American lawyer, who in turn sold it to Henry Clay Folger's widow, Emily Jordan Folger in 1931, for the sum of $3,500, as a gift to the Folger Shakespeare Library, which opened the following year.In 1932, the writer Percy Allen argued that the painting originally depicted Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, but had been later retouched. In 1940, Charles Wisner Barrell investigated the portrait using X-rays and concurred with Allen's view. Art historian William Pressly, who catalogued the Folger's paintings, and directed the 1988 restoration of the work, states that the controversy surrounding the sitter's identity was resolved in 1979, when restorative work on the painting revealed conclusively that it had been begun as a portrait of Sir Hugh Hamersley. The Folger Library dates the painting to 1612, and while stating that most researchers identify the painting's subject as Sir Hugh Hamersley, notes that some Oxfordians contend it depicts Edward de Vere. It currently hangs in the Folger Shakespeare Library.
Ashbourne, Derbyshire the canon of Shakespeare portraits Emily Jordan Folger Art historian Ashbourne School right mezzotint Hugh Hamersley Charles Wisner Barrell Sotheby's Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford Folger Shakespeare Library Abraham Wivell Oxfordians Percy Allen Henry Clay Folger Sir Hugh Hamersley M.H. Spielmann X-ray