Qualla: Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: Introduction

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Boydell (1720-1804), Public domain. John Boydell wanted to do something almost absurdly ambitious: invent a national school of English painting using William Shakespeare as scaffolding. In 1789 he opened a gallery at 52 Pall Mall, in a neighbourhood that mixed gentlemen's clubs with one of London's more upscale brothels. Inside hung 34 paintings commissioned from the most eminent artists Boydell could persuade - Reynolds, Romney, Fuseli, Kauffman, West - each illustrating a scene from the plays. By the time the venture ended sixteen years later, the walls held somewhere between 167 and 170 canvases, Boydell was effectively bankrupt, the gallery was emptied at lottery, and the architecture of the building had quietly given the world a new classical order.

Image: John Boydell (1720-1804) | Public domain

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: The Print-Seller's Wager

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Boydell, Public domain. Boydell was a print-seller and engraver who had built a fortune exporting English prints to a Europe that had previously condescended to the country's visual arts. His scheme married self-interest to patriotism: commission paintings of Shakespeare scenes, exhibit them in a purpos...

Image: John Boydell | Public domain

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: An Order Built from Fossils

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Robert Smirke (1752 - 1845) – Artist (British) Born in Wigton. Died in London. Details on Google Art Project, Public domain. The Pall Mall building was designed by the architect George Dance the Younger. Its rounded-arched doorway, glazed fanlight, and panelled band course made for a perfectly respectable neoclassical façade. But Dance did something curious with the pilasters: he topped them with capit...

Image: Robert Smirke (1752 - 1845) – Artist (British) Born in Wigton. Died in London. Details on Google Art Project | Public domain

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: Neoclassicism Meets the Coming Storm

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Henry Fuseli, Public domain. When the gallery opened on 4 May 1789, two months before the storming of the Bastille, it was a hit. The Daily Advertiser ran a weekly column on it during exhibition season. The Public Advertiser predicted it would form "such an epoch in the History of the Fine Arts, as will esta...

Image: Henry Fuseli | Public domain

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: The Caricaturist's Knife

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Gillray, Public domain. Not everyone admired the enterprise. James Gillray, England's most savage caricaturist, produced a print titled Shakespeare Sacrificed; or, The Offering to Avarice. In it, a kneeling figure (Boydell himself, unmistakable) burns papers on an altar fanned by a fool, while a small g...

Image: James Gillray | Public domain

Boydell Shakespeare Gallery: The Lottery and the Lost Paintings

Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit James Barry, Public domain. What killed the gallery was not Gillray but France. The Revolutionary Wars cut off the European print market Boydell had spent decades cultivating, and the income stream that was supposed to fund the paintings collapsed. By 1804, with the venture insolvent, Boydell petitioned Par...

Image: James Barry | Public domain