The name originates with the painting's previous owners, the Flower family, who gave it to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The painting depicts Shakespeare gazing out of the picture and wearing a wide white collar.

Mrs C. Flower donated it to the Shakespeare Memorial Trust in Stratford, and it was exhibited at its picture gallery there in 1892.

Sidney Lee, in his 1898 biography of Shakespeare, declared that "no other pictorial representation of the poet has equally serious claims to be treated as contemporary with himself".

[2] However, in 1904, the art critic Marion Spielmann undertook a detailed analysis in which he demonstrated that the painting resembled Droeshout's revised second-state print rather than the original print, concluding that if Droeshout had copied the painting, then the first version would be more directly imitative.