10.1 Cartwright’s Life and Legacy
William Cartwright was the son of a stage actor and manager of the same name. Cartwright junior was christened at St. Mary Magdalene, Old Fish Street, in the City of London, on 1 January 1607,1 which implies that he had been born in December 1606. Quite a lot is known about the theatre companies to which father and son belonged, and the roles that they played on stage.2 They earned their living in this way until August 1642, when the outbreak of the Civil War forced the theatres to close, not to open again until early in 1660. After some years of acting on the Continent, Cartwright returned to London, where he needed to look for another source of income.3 Around 1651 he seems to have become a bookseller, and he probably also sold prints. He is known to have published one book, in 1658, The actors vindication [2], which was a reissue of Thomas Heywood’s An apology for actors of 1612, appropriately containing a defence of stage actors.4 From 1660 Cartwright focused on acting again; he was considered a good actor. It is not known whether he was still dealing in books and prints at the end of his life; he was still acting in the mid-1680s. From at least 1666 until his death in 1686 he lived in a large house in Great Turnstile, Holborn, near Lincoln’s Inn Fields. This is possibly when he started collecting paintings, prints and drawings.
It is not clear how many times Cartwright was married; at least one portrait of a ‘Mrs Cartwright’ has been preserved [3]. For the last 17 years of his life Cartwright is said to have lived alone, or rather without family, as the Johnsons lived with him. If he did have any children, they were no longer alive when he died. Towards the end of his life, early in December 1686, Cartwright made his will, in which he bequeathed his collections to the College of God’s Gift, which had been founded in 1619 by Edward Alleyn (1566-1626) at Dulwich, in south London.5 Alleyn too was a stage actor, and had been a friend of Cartwright senior. Alleyn’s foundation consisted of a school (now Dulwich College), almshouses (now the Dulwich Almshouse), and a chapel (the extant Christ’s Chapel of God’s Gift). In addition, Alleyn had given a collection of paintings to the school (now part of the collection of Dulwich Picture Gallery).6
Cartwright bequeathed to ‘Dullwich Colledge’ £400 plus ‘two guilt silver Tankards, one Indian Silke Quilt, one large damask Table Cloth with other convenient lynnen for the Communion Table and the beautifying of the Chappell, and also a large Turky worke Carpett for the dyning Roome’. He refers to his paintings as ‘severall pictures of storyes and Landskips for beautifying the Dyning Room and Gallery’. This indicates that Cartwright had few pretensions about his collection: he was mainly concerned with ‘beautifying’ the school, chapel and gallery in Dulwich, not with giving an art-historical or historical overview of any kind. He bequeathed his books with the words ‘also such of his bookes convenient for a Library as the Master Warden and School master shall approve of for the service of them and the Schollars’. So a selection was to be made from them for the use of the staff and pupils of the school.
The obstructiveness of Francis and Jane Johnson meant that the College did not, in fact, receive the £400. When Cartwright died, the number of works of art in his collection was already dwindling: the Johnsons sold or pawned paintings and other objects from the collection, including the Turkish carpet and the six volumes of prints. Cartwright had also wished to be buried in the porch of the College chapel, but he was buried on 18 December 1686, the day after his death, at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden, probably because the Johnsons found that easier.
2
Title page Heywood 1658
3
John Greenhill
Mrs Jane Cartwright, ca. 1664-1667
Dulwich (Southwark), Dulwich Picture Gallery, inv./cat.nr. DPG387
Notes
1 That church was lost in the Great Fire of London in 1666; its replacement, designed by Sir Christopher Wren (1632-1723), was demolished in the 19th century. It was located roughly between St. Paul’s Cathedral and the present Millennium Bridge.
2 Kalinsky/Waterfield 1987, p. 5-7, and Appendix I, ‘The Documented Roles of William Cartwright’ [junior], in ibid., p. 84-85 (R. T. Jeffree).
3 Freddie Witts added in an email to the author, 18 October 2023, that after 1642 Cartwright probably tried to stay an actor as long as possible, that he probably went with the King’s Company to Paris (and The Hague?), that in 1648 he participated in illegal stage plays in London, and that he probably started his bookselling busines c.1651. Witts refers for the trips abroad to: Boswell 1929, p. 129, and Hotson 1928, p. 21, 36 and 167, with many thanks.
4 The title page states that the book was printed by one G.E. for one W.C. The additional reason why this W.C. is generally identified as our William Cartwright is that in the introduction to the new edition much praise is given to Edward Alleyn, who, as mentioned, was the founder of the original Dulwich College, and a friend of William Cartwright senior. A copy of the book survives at Dulwich College Archive (no. 1886/1333); Heywood 1612; Heywood 1658. See also Heywood 1841.
5 It is most likely that Cartwright also made the inventory of his paintings at that time. He mentions a portrait by John Greenhill of James II with the title ‘ye Duke of Yorke’ (no. 68; DPG416, Ingamells 2008, p. 63). James was not Duke of York but James II after 6 February 1685, when Charles II died. That could mean that Cartwright made his inventory before that; however one could also argue that the portrait was given that title by Cartwright because it was painted when James was still Duke of York. The inventory is not a chronological list of acquisitions with corresponding costs, as suggested in Karst 2013-2014, p. 38, and Karst 2021, p. 90, 238 (note 73).
6 Reid/Maniura 1994.