Tudor Painting and Decorating
In the search for Shakespeare’s lost interiors, we look at the variety of painted decoration available in early modern England
You’d be forgiven for imagining Shakespeare’s home as a little dark, uninviting even. Many of us associate Tudor interiors with heavy wooden furniture, small windows, and plain walls. But, in reality, houses like Shakespeare’s Birthplace and his adult home of New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon were often vibrant, welcoming places, helped in no small part by colourful painted decoration.
Early modern homes were awash with brightly-coloured painted schemes. These paintings were either applied directly onto the wall (wall paintings), or onto a large textile (wall hangings). Today, four replica painted cloths hang in Shakespeare’s Birthplace, adding both colour and warmth to its interiors. These hangings were created by artists David Cutmore and Melissa White in 2000, when the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust reinterpreted Shakespeare’s childhood home. The paintings on these textiles are based on real examples from other houses and collections.
The artificial wood panelling hanging in the hall can be traced to a set of wall hangings in the Victoria and Albert Museum (W41-1952), while the lively patterns displayed in the first-floor chambers are based on surviving wall paintings from Oxford (search for the Pizza Express on Cornmarket Street). Each example dates from the late 1500s early 1600s.
This is important because, just as today, styles shifted, designs went in and out of fashion, and different regions had their own distinct trends. Any of these painted patterns might have appeared on the walls of the Birthplace at one time or another, but displayed together, they reveal just how vibrant and changing early modern interiors could be.
A variety of designs filled the walls of early modern homes. Sprawling vines could be found creeping along various surfaces. Stars and diamonds interlocked on walls to create intricate geometric puzzles. Mythical creatures peered from paintings as more recognisable animals pranced from wall to wall. Scenes from the bible or ancient mythology played out above fireplaces and text found within friezes (the highest section of a wall) might offer a moral warning to onlookers below. And, every now and then, you would encounter a coat of arms or a royal symbol proclaiming loyalty to the monarch of the time. More than one of these designs might be found within a single room and inspiration came from a variety of sources: embroidered textiles, engravings and printed books, to name a few. Only the most public or frequently used rooms would feature this form of display, as painted decoration relied a great deal on the availability of materials and access to skilled craftsmen.
In Henry IV, Part I Falstaff describes scenes we might expect to find in such paintings: ‘my whole charge consists of ensigns, corporals, lieutenants, gentleman of companies - slaves as ragged as Lazarus in the painted cloth’ (4.2.23-6). Biblical stories were frequently featured in interior decoration during Shakespeare’s lifetime and beyond. Three pieces of painted wall hanging dating from the late 1600s or early 1700s can be found in SBT’s collections today (SBT 1993-63/3). These painted cloths tell the story of the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca (Genesis 24), an especially popular scene in the home of newly married couples (Garratt and Hamling, 2016, 52).
Often this kind of imagery contained moral lessons, but it also demonstrated the piety of the household. In this way, painted decoration reveals more than simply what was fashionable at the time; it also helps us to understand how people expressed themselves. When studying this sort of evidence, we need to think about how it was viewed, experienced, understood, and what it said about the person who commissioned it.
No evidence remains to help us solve the mystery of Shakespeare’s decoration: what form it might have taken, and, ultimately, what choices Shakespeare might have made. However, we do have fragments of decoration belonging to other people from this period, people of a similar status to Shakespeare. From this evidence, we can begin to build a picture of what was popular during Shakespeare's lifetime and piece together an idea of how Shakespeare might have decorated his own gentry townhouse.
With thanks to Alex Hewitt, a PhD student in History at the University of Birmingham who is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council: Midlands3Cities