Reaction
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. (The exact inventory is uncertain and most of the paintings have disappeared; only around 40 paintings can be identified with any certainty.) According to Frederick Burwick, during its sixteen-year operation, the Gallery reflected the transition from Neoclassicism to Romanticism. 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."
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. 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.
At the beginning of the enterprise, reactions were generally positive. The Public Advertiser wrote on 6 May 1789: "the pictures in general give a mirror of the poet ... 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". The Times wrote a day later:
| 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. |
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". 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".
Criticism increased as the project dragged on: the first volume did not appear until 1791. James Gillray published a cartoon labelled "Boydell sacrificing the Works of Shakespeare to the Devil of Money-Bags". 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! |
Northcote, while appreciating Boydell's largesse, also criticised the results of the project: "With the exception of a few pictures by Joshua and 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".
Read more about this topic: Boydell Shakespeare Gallery
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