Throughout the edition, modern (i.e.

18th-century) spelling was preferred as were First

Folio readings.[38]
Boydell sought out the most eminent painters and engravers of the day to contribute paintings for the
gallery, engravings for the folio, and illustrations for the edition. Artists included Richard
Westall, Thomas Stothard, George Romney, Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, Angelica
Kauffman, Robert Smirke, James Durno, John Opie, Francesco Bartolozzi, Thomas Kirk, Henry
Thomson, and Boydell's nephew and business partner, Josiah Boydell.
The folio and the illustrated Shakespeare edition were "by far the largest single engraving enterprise
ever undertaken in England".[39] As print collector and dealer Christopher Lennox-Boyd explains, "had
there not been a market for such engravings, not one of the paintings would have been
commissioned, and few, if any, of the artists would have risked painting such elaborate
compositions".[40] Scholars believe that a variety of engraving methods were employed and that line
engraving was the "preferred medium" because it was "clear and hardwearing" and because it had a
high reputation. Stipple engraving, which was quicker and often used to produce shading effects,
wore out quicker and was valued less.[41] Many plates were a mixture of both. Several scholars have
suggested that mezzotint and aquatint were also used.[42] Lennox-Boyd, however, claims that "close
examination of the plates confirms" that these two methods were not used and argues that they were
"totally unsuitable": mezzotint wore quickly and aquatint was too new (there would not have been
enough artists capable of executing it).[40] Most of Boydell's engravers were also trained artists; for
example, Bartolozzi was renowned for his stippling technique.[43]

Angelica Kauffman described her scene from Troilus and Cressida, engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti for the folio:
Troilus "sees his wife in loving discourse with Diomedes and he wants to rush into the tent to catch them by
surprise, but Ulysses and the other keep him back by force".[44]

Boydell's relationships with his illustrators were generally congenial. One of them, James Northcote,
praised Boydell's liberal payments. He wrote in an 1821 letter that Boydell "did more for the
advancement of the arts in England than the whole mass of the nobility put together! He paid me
more nobly than any other person has done; and his memory I shall ever hold in
reverence".[45] Boydell typically paid the painters between £105 to £210, and the engravers between
£262 and £315.[46] Joshua Reynolds at first declined Boydell's offer to work on the project, but he
agreed when pressed. Boydell offered Reynolds carte blanche for his paintings, giving him a down
payment of £500, an extraordinary amount for an artist who had not even agreed to do a specific
work. Boydell eventually paid him a total of £1,500.[47][48]
There are 96 illustrations in the nine volumes of the illustrated edition and each play has at least
one. Approximately two-thirds of the plays, 23 out of 36, are each illustrated by a single artist.
Approximately two-thirds of the total number of illustrations, or 65, were completed by three
artists: William Hamilton, Richard Westall, and Robert Smirke. The primary illustrators of the edition
were known as book illustrators, whereas a majority of the artists included in the folio were known for
their paintings.[49] Lennox-Boyd argues that the illustrations in the edition have a "uniformity and
cohesiveness" that the folio lacks because the artists and engravers working on them understood
book illustration while those working on the folio were working in an unfamiliar medium.[50]
The print folio, A Collection of Prints, From Pictures Painted for the Purpose of Illustrating the
Dramatic Works of Shakspeare, by the Artists of Great-Britain (1805), was originally intended to be a
collection of the illustrations from the edition, but a few years into the project, Boydell altered his
plan. He guessed that he could sell more folios and editions if the pictures were different. Of the 97
prints made from paintings, two-thirds of them were made by ten of the artists. Three artists account
for one-third of the paintings. In all, 31 artists contributed works.[49]

Gallery building[edit]

George Dance's Shakespeare Gallery building, shown in 1851 after its purchase by the British Institution,
wood-engraving by Mason Jackson after from a drawing by Henry Anelay.

In June 1788, Boydell and his nephew secured the lease on a site at 52 Pall
Mall (51°30′20.5″N 0°8′12″W) to build the gallery and engaged George Dance, then the Clerk of the
City Works, as the architect for the project.[51] Pall Mall at that time had a mix of expensive
residences and commercial operations, such as bookshops and gentleman's clubs, popular with
fashionable London society. The area also contained some less genteel establishments: King's
Place (now Pall Mall Place), an alley running to the east and behind Boydell's gallery, was the site of
Charlotte Hayes's high-class brothel.[52] Across King's Place, immediately to the east of Boydell's
building, 51 Pall Mall had been purchased on 26 February 1787 by George Nicol, bookseller and
future husband of Josiah's elder sister, Mary Boydell. As an indication of the changing character of
the area, this property had been the home of Goostree's gentleman's club from 1773 to 1787. Begun
as a gambling establishment for wealthy young men, it had later become a reformist political club
that counted William Pitt and William Wilberforce as members.[51]

Engraving by Benjamin Smith after Thomas Banks's sculpture of Shakespeare attended by Painting and Poetry
Dance's Shakespeare Gallery building had a monumental, neoclassical stone front, and a full-length
exhibition hall on the ground floor. Three interconnecting exhibition rooms occupied the upper floor,
with a total of more than 4,000 square feet (370 m2) of wall space for displaying pictures. The two-
storey façade was not especially large for the street, but its solid classicism had an imposing
effect.[51] Some reports describe the exterior as "sheathed in copper".[53]
The lower storey of the façade was dominated by a large, rounded-arched doorway in the centre.
The unmoulded arch rested on wide piers, each broken by a narrow window, above which ran a
simple cornice. Dance placed a transom across the doorway at the level of the cornice bearing the
inscription "Shakespeare Gallery". Below the transom were the main entry doors, with glazed panels
and side lights matching the flanking windows. A radial fanlight filled the lunette above the transom.
In each of the spandrels to the left and right of the arch, Dance set a carving of a lyre inside a
ribboned wreath. Above all this ran a panelled band course dividing the lower storey from the
upper.[51]
The upper façade contained paired pilasters on either side, and a thick entablature and
triangular pediment. The architect Sir John Soane criticised Dance's combination of slender pilasters
and a heavy entablature as a "strange and extravagant absurdity".[54] The capitals topping the
pilasters sported volutes in the shape of ammonite fossils. Dance invented this neo-classical feature,
which became known as the Ammonite Order, specifically for the gallery. In a recess between the
pilasters, Dance placed Thomas Banks's sculpture Shakespeare attended by Painting and Poetry,
for which the artist was paid 500 guineas. The sculpture depicted Shakespeare, reclining against a
rock, between the Dramatic Muse and the Genius of Painting. Beneath it was a panelled pedestal
inscribed with a quotation from Hamlet: "He was a Man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon
his like again".[51][55]

Reaction[edit]

Fuseli "reveled in the monumental and grotesque" in his scenes from Macbeth, engraving by James Caldwell[56]

The Shakespeare Gallery, when it opened on 4 May 1789, contained 34 paintings, and by the end of
its run it had between 167 and 170.[57] (The exact inventory is uncertain and most of the paintings
have disappeared; only around 40 paintings can be identified with any certainty.[58]) According to
Frederick Burwick, during its sixteen-year operation, the Gallery reflected the transition
from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.[59] Works by artists such as James Northcote represent the
conservative, neoclassical elements of the gallery, while those of Henry Fuseli represent the newly
emerging Romantic movement. William Hazlitt praised Northcote in an essay entitled "On the Old
Age of Artists", writing "I conceive any person would be more struck with Mr. Fuseli at first sight, but
would wish to visit Mr. Northcote oftener."[60]
The gallery itself was a fashionable hit with the public. Newspapers carried updates of the
construction of the gallery, down to drawings for the proposed façade.[61] The Daily
Advertiser featured a weekly column on the gallery from May through August (exhibition season).
Artists who had influence with the press, and Boydell himself, published anonymous articles to
heighten interest in the gallery, which they hoped would increase sales of the edition.[62]
At the beginning of the enterprise, reactions were generally positive.[63] The Public Advertiser wrote
on 6 May 1789: "the pictures in general give a mirror of the poet ... [The Shakespeare Gallery] bids
fair to form such an epoch in the History of the Fine Arts, as will establish and confirm the superiority
of the English School".[64] The Times wrote a day later:
James Gillray's cartoon satirising the Boydell venture; caption reads: "Shakespeare Sacrificed; or, The Offering
to Avarice"

This establishment may be considered with great truth, as the first stone of an English School of
Painting; and it is peculiarly honourable to a great commercial country, that it is indebted for such a
distinguished circumstance to a commercial character—such an institution—will place, in the
Calendar of Arts, the name of Boydell in the same rank with the Medici of Italy.[64]
Fuseli himself may have written the review in the Analytical Review, which praised the general plan
of the gallery while at the same time hesitating: "such a variety of subjects, it may be supposed,
must exhibit a variety of powers; all cannot be the first; while some must soar, others must skim the
meadow, and others content themselves to walk with dignity".[65] However, according to Frederick
Burwick, critics in Germany "responded to the Shakespeare Gallery with far more thorough and
meticulous attention than did the critics in England".[66]
Criticism increased as the project dragged on: the first volume did not appear until 1791.[29] James
Gillray published a cartoon labelled "Boydell sacrificing the Works of Shakespeare to the Devil of
Money-Bags".[67] The essayist and soon-to-be co-author of the children's book Tales from
Shakespeare (1807) Charles Lamb criticised the venture from the outset:
What injury did not Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery do me with Shakespeare. To have Opie's
Shakespeare, Northcote's Shakespeare, light headed Fuseli's Shakespeare, wooden-headed West's
Shakespeare, deaf-headed Reynolds' Shakespeare, instead of my and everybody's Shakespeare.
To be tied down to an authentic face of Juliet! To have Imogen's portrait! To confine the illimitable! [68]
Northcote, while appreciating Boydell's largesse, also criticised the results of the project: "With the
exception of a few pictures by Joshua [Reynolds] and [John] Opie, and—I hope I may add—myself,
it was such a collection of slip-slop imbecility as was dreadful to look at, and turned out, as I had
expected it would, in the ruin of poor Boydell's affairs".[69]

Collapse[edit]
Richard III: Act IV, Scene 3: Murder of the princes (1791), engraved by James Heath after a painting by James
Northcote

By 1796, subscriptions to the edition had dropped by two-thirds.[29] The painter and diarist Joseph
Farington recorded that this was a result of the poor engravings:
West said He looked over the Shakespeare prints and was sorry to see them of such inferior quality.
He said that excepting that from His Lear by Sharpe, that from Northcote's children in the Tower, and
some small ones, there were few that could be approved. Such a mixture of dotting and engraving,
and such a general deficiency in respect of drawing which He observed the Engravers seemed to
know little of, that the volumes presented a mass of works which He did not wonder many
subscribers had declined to continue their subscription.[70]
The mix of engraving styles was criticised; line engraving was considered the superior form and
artists and subscribers disliked the mixture of lesser forms with it.[71] Moreover, Boydell's engravers
fell behind schedule, delaying the entire project.[29] He was forced to engage lesser artists, such as
Hamilton and Smirke, at a lower price to finish the volumes as his business started to fail.[72] Modern
art historians have generally concurred that the quality of the engravings, particularly in the folio, was
poor. Moreover, the use of so many different artists and engravers led to a lack of stylistic
cohesion.[73]
Although the Boydells ended with 1,384 subscriptions,[74] the rate of subscriptions dropped, and
remaining subscriptions were also increasingly in doubt. Like many businesses at the time, the
Boydell firm kept few records. Only the customers knew what they had purchased.[75] This caused
numerous difficulties with debtors who claimed they had never subscribed or had subscribed for
less. Many subscribers also defaulted, and Josiah Boydell spent years after John's death attempting
to force them to pay.
The Boydells focused all their attention on the Shakespeare edition and other large projects, such
as The History of the River Thames and The Complete Works of John Milton, rather than on lesser,
more profitable ventures.[76] When both the Shakespeare enterprise and the Thames book failed, the
firm had no capital to fall back upon. Beginning in 1789, with the onset of the French revolution, John
Boydell's export business to Europe was cut off. By the late 1790s and early 19th century, the two-
thirds of his business that depended upon the export trade was in serious financial difficulty.[51][77]
In 1804, John Boydell decided to appeal to Parliament for a private bill to authorise a lottery to
dispose of everything in his business. The bill received royal assent on 23 March, and by November
the Boydells were ready to sell tickets.[78][79] John Boydell died before the lottery was drawn on 28
January 1805, but lived long enough to see each of the 22,000 tickets purchased at
three guineas apiece (£270 each in modern terms). To encourage ticket sales and reduce unsold
inventory, every purchaser was guaranteed to receive a print worth one guinea from the Boydell
company's stock. There were 64 winning tickets for major prizes, the highest being the Gallery itself
and its collection of paintings. This went to William Tassie, a gem engraver and cameo modeller, of
Leicester Fields (now Leicester Square). Josiah offered to buy the gallery and its paintings back from
Tassie for £10,000 (worth about £800,000 now), but Tassie refused and auctioned the paintings
at Christie's.[80] The painting collection and two reliefs by Anne Damer fetched a total of £6,181 18s.
6d. The Banks sculpture group from the façade was initially intended to be kept as a monument for
Boydell's tomb. Instead, it remained part of the façade of the building in its new guise as the British
Institution until the building was torn down in 1868–69. The Banks sculpture was then moved
to Stratford-upon-Avon and re-erected in New Place Garden between June and November
1870.[51] The lottery saved Josiah from bankruptcy and earned him £45,000, enabling him to begin
business again as a printer.

Legacy[edit]

Both Robert Bowyer and Thomas Macklin embarked on illustrated editions of the Bible which were eventually
joined together into "Bowyer's Bible".

From the outset, Boydell's project inspired imitators. In April 1788, after the announcement of the
Shakespeare Gallery, but a year before its opening, Thomas Macklin opened a Gallery of the Poets
in the former Royal Academy building on the south side of Pall Mall. The first exhibition featured one
work from each of 19 artists, including Fuseli, Reynolds, and Thomas Gainsborough. The gallery
added new paintings of subjects from poetry each year, and from 1790 supplemented these with
scenes from the Bible. The Gallery of the Poets closed in 1797, and its contents were offered by
lottery.[81] This did not deter Henry Fuseli from opening a Milton Gallery in the same building in 1799.
Another such venture was the Historic Gallery opened by Robert Bowyer in Schomberg House at 87
Pall Mall in about 1793. The gallery accumulated 60 paintings (many by the same artists who
worked for Boydell) commissioned to illustrate a new edition of David Hume's The History of Great
Britain.[82] Ultimately, Bowyer had to seek parliamentary approval for a sale by lottery in 1805, and
the other ventures, like Boydell's, also ended in financial failure.[82][83]

The Tempest, Act I, Scene I, engraved by Benjamin Smith after a painting by George Romney.

The building in Pall Mall was purchased in 1805 by the British Institution, a private club of
connoisseurs founded that year to hold exhibitions. It remained an important part of the London art
scene until disbanded in 1867, typically holding a Spring exhibition of new works for sale from the
start of February to the first week of May, and a loan exhibition of old masters, generally not for sale,
from the first week of June to the end of August.[84]
The paintings and engravings that were part of the Boydell Gallery affected the way Shakespeare's
plays were staged, acted, and illustrated in the 19th century. They also became the subject of
criticism in important works such as Romantic poet and essayist Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's "Lectures on Shakespeare" and William Hazlitt's dramatic criticism. Despite Charles
Lamb's criticism of the Gallery's productions, Charles and Mary Lamb's children's book, Tales from
Shakespeare (1807), was illustrated using plates from the project.[85]
The Boydell enterprise's most enduring legacy was the folio. It was reissued throughout the 19th
century, and in 1867, "by the aid of photography the whole series, excepting the portraits of their
Majesties George III. and Queen Charlotte, is now presented in a handy form, suitable for ordinary
libraries or the drawing-room table, and offered as an appropriate memorial of the tercentenary
celebration of the poet's birth".[86] Scholars have described Boydell's folio as a precursor to the
modern coffee table book.[87]

List of art works