Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

In addition to the establishment of the gallery, Boydell planned to produce an illustrated edition of William Shakespeare's plays and a folio of prints based upon a series of paintings by different contemporary painters.

Capitalising on this interest, Boydell decided to publish a grand illustrated edition of Shakespeare's plays that would showcase the talents of British painters and engravers.

The press reported weekly on the building of Boydell's gallery, designed by George Dance the Younger, on a site in Pall Mall.

Boydell commissioned works from famous painters of the day, such as Joshua Reynolds, and the folio of engravings proved the enterprise's most lasting legacy.

[8] This tradition began with William Hogarth (whose prints reached all levels of society) and attained its peak in the Royal Academy exhibitions, which displayed paintings, drawings, and sculptures.

According to Shakespeare scholar Gary Taylor, Shakespearean criticism became so "associated with the dramatis personae of 18th-century English literature ... [that] he could not be extracted without uprooting a century and a half of the national canon".

[12] The plays appeared in "pleasant and readable books in small format" which "were supposed ... to have been taken for common or garden use, domestic rather than library sets".

[13] Shakespeare became "domesticated" in the 18th century, particularly with the publication of family editions such as Bell's in 1773 and 1785–86, which advertised themselves as "more instructive and intelligible; especially to the young ladies and to youth; glaring indecencies being removed".

Boydell and Nicol wanted to produce an illustrated edition of a multi-volume work and intended to bind and sell the 72 large prints separately in a folio.

In the middle of the project, Boydell decided that he could make more money if he published different prints in the folio than in the illustrated edition; as a result, the two sets of images are not identical.

Edmond Malone, himself an editor of a rival Shakespeare edition, wrote that "before the scheme was well-formed, or the proposals entirely printed off, near six hundred persons eagerly set down their names, and paid their subscriptions to a set of books and prints that will cost each person, I think, about ninety guineas; and on looking over the list, there were not above twenty names among them that anybody knew".

[31] The "magnificent and accurate" Shakespeare edition which Boydell began in 1786 was to be the focus of his enterprise—he viewed the print folio and the gallery as offshoots of the main project.

Steevens, according to Evelyn Wenner, who has studied the history of the Boydell edition, was "at first an ardent advocate of the plan" but "soon realized that the editor of this text must in the very scheme of things give way to painters, publishers and engravers".

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.

[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).

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.

Approximately two-thirds of the total number of illustrations, or 65, were completed by three artists: William Hamilton, Richard Westall, and Robert Smirke.

[49] 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 / 51.505694°N 0.13667°W / 51.505694; -0.13667) 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.

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 architect Sir John Soane criticised Dance's combination of slender pilasters and a heavy entablature as a "strange and extravagant absurdity".

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.

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.

[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".

[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.

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.

[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 (£350 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.

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.

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".