Watching Time Team sparked a 13-year quest that could help earn my family a £200m fortune
FOR half a century, an unassuming portrait sat in the corner of the Wadlow family home in Aylesbury.
It wasn’t particularly eye-catching with bright colours, nor placed in a prominent position despite its Elizabethan history – that is, until window cleaner Steven Wadlow, 58, started asking questions.
Only then did the family realise they had their hands on what could be one of the most sought after paintings in history – one of the missing portraits of William Shakespeare.
“We’ve not got a huge manor hour or anything like that, but the painting sat in the family home since I was little – I’d never really thought about it, it was always just there,” Steven exclusively tells The Sun.
“It was incognito in the corner for many years, I just remember I didn’t really like it because wherever you are in the house it was looking at you, like one of those portraits in Scooby-Doo.”
The very same painting is at the heart of a new Netflix documentary, The Stuff of Dreams, following Steven on his thirteen-year journey to try to verify the identity of the painting’s sitter.
Steven, who still cleans windows, has been on an obsessive quest to prove that the oil on canvas, purchased by his father in the 1960s for £700, is actually a rare portrait of the Bard.
If he’s right, the unassuming portrait could be worth up to £200million, and join just three images of Shakespeare that have been verified by experts around the world as legitimate.
Steve recalls: “Shakespeare sat for years looking at me doing my homework – he couldn’t help it much with my homework, really, to be honest, but he was always there in the corner of the room.
“We’d not paid it much attention until 2012, when my parents were watching Time Team, and an image of one of Shakespeare’s portraits popped up, and my dad thought it was similar.
“He called me and said, ‘Oh, I think it might be Shakespeare in our painting, the chap in the corner.’ I thought it was wonderful news, but I wasn’t excited or anything, it was just nice to know who it was.
“I thought there must’ve been hundreds of paintings of Shakespeare because he’s so famous.
“I only started looking into it because a visitor we had a few weeks later, who had never seen the painting and had an interest in Shakespeare, told me what we had must’ve been a very good copy.
“It was then I thought maybe I should start looking into this, and slowly, I went from having not a single interest in Shakespeare to being a bit obsessed for the past 13 years.”
That obsession has come at a cost for Steven, who – despite some evidence pointing towards the sitter in the portrait being the Romeo and Juliet writer – is still battling to prove to experts that he’s right.
‘It’s not all about the money’
Steven works as a window cleaner by day, and then spends all the remaining time he has researching, learning and reaching out to those who can help him solve the mystery.
He continues: “If it was all about the money, I would’ve sold it off years ago for someone else to handle.
“But it has, in some ways, taken over my life, and there have been cases where we’ve had to make sacrifices as a family because I’ve been spending so much time investigating the painting.
“I’m not 24-7 on it, I still have my window cleaning business and I try to keep everything balanced out, but I do spend a lot of time researching because it means a lot to me.”
Even when he’s washing windows, Steven isn’t wasting time he could be thinking about the painting.
“I’ve got a range of customers – some know about the painting and some don’t,” he continues.
“Some people will come out and chat to me about it while I clean the windows and are very invested in it, and some people aren’t interested at all in Shakespeare or the art.
“Honestly, I thought many people would be taking the mickey out of me for being so interested in the painting and Shakespeare when I first started out, but it’s all been very positive.”
‘I’m just a normal person so the experts aren’t listening’
Despite the positive reaction from those around him, Wadlow still believes that his job and background have made it difficult for him to be taken seriously in the world of art and academia.
“People think that because I’m a window cleaner, I must be thick,” he says. “I haven’t got a chip on my shoulder, but it’s nice to express that just because someone hasn’t got an academic background doesn’t mean they don’t know what they’re talking about.
“The job doesn’t matter. I can still do my research and have an interest in Shakespeare and art.”
He feels that his working-class background has prevented institutions from giving his discovery the attention it deserves.
“Nobody who looks after Shakespeare’s image has reached out to me,” he says. “I understand it to a point—over the years, they’ve probably had loads of people coming forward and saying, ‘Oh, I’ve got something.’”
He can’t help but wonder if an academic or a respected art historian would have been met with a different response from the gatekeepers of Shakespeare’s image.
Steven explains: “I do feel like, as a person that’s not from a certain academic field and that I’m just a normal person saying it, that maybe that’s why they aren’t listening.
“If I’d been a PhD scholar, maybe they’d be more inclined to look into whether I’m right or wrong.
“One expert told me flat out no without even looking at it. They said, ‘If it was Shakespeare, then that would’ve been discovered years ago.’ That was quite difficult.
“I don’t mean to sound paranoid about the way experts are acting, but I do think that if it turned out to be Shakespeare, it wouldn’t be a good thing for everyone – because it changes what we know.
“For some people, it’s probably easier if this portrait were to go away – because it might be seen as rocking the boat on history or something like that.
“I’m not trying to say anyone else is wrong, and we’re right, or cause any trouble, we just want this portrait to be in the club if that’s where it rightfully belongs to be.”
‘I want to find answers to the mystery’
Most contentious is the fact that the Chandos, one of the most famous images widely believed to be Shakespeare, sees the Bard with a balding head and a thick, dark beard.
While Steven’s oil on canvas sees a man with a full head of auburn hair, and no beard at all.
Despite the scepticism, Steven’s painting has undergone significant testing, and he’s reached out and consulted with some world-leading minds to get to the bottom of the painting’s history.
Scientists at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge confirmed the wooden panel dates back to 1595, the year Shakespeare would have been 31. The number “31” is faintly visible in the painting itself.
While cutting-edge facial recognition software compared the portrait to the Droeshout engraving – the only image of Shakespeare confirmed by those who knew him – and found a 91.2% match.
By comparison, the Chandos Portrait, widely believed to be Shakespeare, only scored 88% and the Cobbe portrait, long debated to be Shakespeare, only 84%.
World-renowned art experts who worked on uncovering the drawings under the Mona Lisa examined the painting and agreed with Wadlow’s hypothesis after peeling back the layers of paint using lasers.
There are also artistic clues that point towards Shakespeare.
Experts at UCL believe the lace ruff in the painting was added later to elevate the status of the sitter.
Additionally, the painting contains an unidentified coat of arms, the family were granted a coat of arms after Shakespeare’s death, but they had long been working towards getting one during his lifetime.
Not only that, but the painting has links to Buckinghamshire’s Great Tew Manor – recorded as having housed the Chandos portrait, and a now missing Shakespeare oil on canvas, dated 1595, in historic accounts from the time.
The same missing portrait of Shakespeare is said to be the basis of the Droeshout, the only widely accepted image that historians have not disputed is Shakespeare.
‘I’ve got a real attachment to it’
If Wadlow is correct, and all the clues point in the right direction, his portrait could be worth a fortune.
Steven says: “I would never expect to get as much as £200m for it. If somebody’s interested in it for £50million, would I sell? I honestly don’t know.
“I’m not greedy, so I’d probably be a bit silly to say no. But who knows? I’ve got an attachment to it.”
But money isn’t the driving force. He adds: “If it didn’t turn out to be Shakespeare, of course, I’d be disappointed. But if it’s not Shakespeare, that means it’s proven to be someone else,” he adds.
“I’d still find that interesting. It would still be worth a lot of money, and I’d probably still want to research about the whoever he turns out to be, and find answers to that mystery.”
‘I want to become an art historian’
As his documentary The Stuff of Dreams gains international attention, Steven is hopeful that more experts will take his claim seriously and open up the conversation once more.
He continues: “You wouldn’t believe how many messages and emails I’ve had from people across the world who say they are convinced that my painting is Shakespeare.
“I’ve even had actors who have been in Shakespeare productions coming forward to speak to me about it, too – many people from many walks of life, it’s been fantastic.”
If nothing else, the journey has changed Wadlow’s life forever.
“Before all this started, over 12 years now, I didn’t really know anything at all about Shakespeare,” he says. “I certainly didn’t know anything about his life, and wasn’t that interested in his work.
“Then of course this whole process has changed all that, and now I could probably go on Mastermind about the topic, without wanting to sound big-headed.
“I’d never have been to the places I’ve been or spoken to the kinds of people I’ve spoken to without this – when there’s a Shakespeare programme on TV, I can say I probably know many of the experts, now.
“If I ended up selling the painting and making loads of money, I’d retire and want to get into that sort of work with art and identification because I’ve honestly enjoyed it so much.”
One thing is certain: Steven has no intention of giving up until he gets definitive answers.
He says: “If I didn’t think I had the evidence to prove it’s Shakespeare, then I’d have given up years ago. I don’t want to be wasting my time.
“I know sometimes I can be a bit stubborn and don’t want to give up, but if someone had said to me with evidence that this painting wasn’t Shakespeare, then I’d have stopped all of this.
“I just need a reason why it’s not him to accept that, but nobody has given me one so far, and every hurdle we’ve come up against, we’ve managed to smash our way through.
“I’ve got a copy of the painting framed on the wall of my home – the real one is now in storage somewhere safe a and I look at it every now and again and I say to it, ‘Come on, Shakey, please just give us some help with this’.
“I am just hoping that if I’m tenacious enough, then in the end everyone might start listening and be able to help me solve this once and for all.”
The Stuff of Dreams is available to stream on Netflix now
