Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery

December 17, 2015 10:22 AM

In 1796, Jane Austen visited John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. The museum (operational from 1789-1805) was entirely devoted to specially-commissioned paintings of scenes from Shakespeare's plays, and played a significant role in shaping the dramatist's reputation during the late eighteenth century. This reconstruction of the gallery includes the catalog and the paintings that would have been hanging there in 1796 (the museum's collection ultimately included well over 150 paintings). For more information on the gallery, see the Folger Library's Marketing Shakespeare. The Romantic Illustration Network is working on digitizing extant engravings of the gallery's entire collection. Visitors to the gallery were themselves painted in 1790.
posted by thomas j wise (4 comments total)

Very cool, I knew nothing about this!
posted by languagehat at 10:40 AM on December 17, 2015

My all time favorite picture of Shakespeare has been this painting of David Garrick with his arm around his best buddy Will. It is the precursor to every last "me with a celebrity" selfie there has ever been.
posted by jfwlucy at 12:26 PM on December 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

This gallery was a worthwhile endeavor. As someone who prefers to read Shakespeare, rather than hearing his works performed, I find these little visualizations charming. A modern version would be welcome.
posted by Modest House at 2:12 PM on December 17, 2015

Thanks for these links, tjw: I’d only heard of Boydell and his Gallery in connection with Gillray’s satires of him (as discussed in the 2nd link). It’s fascinating to see the Gallery remade like this.
posted by misteraitch at 12:46 PM on December 19, 2015