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# Study of the Wadlow family portrait, a possible lifetime image of Shakespeare
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/58-letnii-moishchik-okon-stiven-uodlou-iz-gorodka-eilsberi-grafstvo-baks-velikobritaniia-uzhe-bolshe-10-let-pytaetsia-dokazat-chto-iavliaetsia-vladeltsem-edinstvennogo-prizhiznennogo-po/
- Published: 2024-08-28T12:06:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-02T18:37:47.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Art, Observations, Science, Society, People

Stephen Wadlow, a 58-year-old window cleaner from Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom), has spent more than ten years trying to prove that he owns the only portrait of Shakespeare painted in his lifetime.

Stephen's father, Peter Wadlow, an antiques dealer, bought the portrait at the Great Tew estate in Oxfordshire in the 1960s. Ever since, the painting had hung quietly in the Wadlow family's sitting room, until in 2012 a television programme about Shakespeare was broadcast and Peter noticed the resemblance between the portrait and Shakespeare himself.

Over the next 10 years the painting was subjected to a series of serious art-historical investigations. With the aid of X-rays, analysis of the chemical composition of the paint and multispectral imaging, specialists at the University of London established that the picture was painted in 1595, when Shakespeare was 31\. The Paris firm Lumiere Technology, meanwhile, discovered so-called pentimenti (traces of corrections), which indicates that the portrait was indeed painted from life. The French scientists suggested that the portrait might show Shakespeare in the role of Hamlet's father, which, as is well known, he played. Art historians confirmed that the portrait resembles Shakespeare's funerary bust and the engraving by Droeshout, in the first edition of the First Folio.

According to Stephen, the academic world treats his story with scepticism because he belongs to the working class. He is convinced that this is precisely the reason. If the painting is eventually recognised as a portrait of Shakespeare made in his lifetime, then by preliminary estimates its value will be in the region of £250 million. I am on the side of Wadlow the window cleaner.

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_13252@28-08-2024_15-06-03.jpg)

![](https://theparnassian.com/content/images/2026/09/photo_13253@28-08-2024_15-06-03.jpg)