Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, Art museum in London, England
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery was an art museum in Pall Mall in Westminster that displayed paintings inspired by scenes from Shakespeare plays between 1789 and 1805. The space accommodated large canvases and filled over the years with more than 160 works by British painters.
Engraver John Boydell launched the project in November 1786 to support British artists and advance history painting in England. The gallery opened three years later but failed financially and was dissolved through a lottery in 1805.
Paintings inside the exhibition captured dramatic moments from plays such as Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear and drew London visitors who valued Shakespearean theatre and literature. Artists interpreted well-known scenes in their own manner and helped bring the theatre of the 16th century back to life in the late 1700s.
The building on Pall Mall was designed by architect George Dance the Younger and offered high walls for large canvases. Today the museum no longer exists but prints and engravings from this venture can be found in several British collections.
The printed engravings from this project continued to be sold long after the closure and influenced the image of Shakespeare in the visual arts of the 19th century. Some of the paintings shown here are now in museums such as Tate Britain or the Yale Center for British Art.
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