The Romantic Illustration Network Shakespeare Gallery
The Romantic Illustration Network would like to express its gratitude to Professor Fred Burwick, who provided us with the negatives for the high-resolution digital images of the engravings displayed below.
The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, 1789-1805
An exhibition of paintings devoted exclusively to scenes from the dramatic works of Shakespeare was opened to the London populace in June, 1789. The Shakespeare Gallery was situated in a huge building at 52 Pall Mall. Formerly occupied by Dodsley’s bookshop, the building had been rebuilt under the supervision of George Dance the younger. The exterior was sheathed in copper; the entrance featured a relief of Shakespeare reclining against a rock, with the Dramatic Muse to his right and the Genius of Painting to his left. The exhibition suite on the ground floor was 130 feet long; the three rooms upstairs provided a wall area of over 4,000 square feet for exhibiting the paintings. Obviously there was room for many more than the thirty-four paintings which were displayed for the first visitors. The number of paintings doubled the ensuing year, and each spring an exhibition of newly completed paintings was announced, so that the Shakespeare Gallery, before it finally closed in 1805, eventually housed 167 canvases by thirty-three artists.
[Excerpt from the Introduction to The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery, by Frederick Burwick]
Click on the thumbnails below to access larger versions of the images, and to view the full-sized image. Images are arranged alphabetically by play, and new plays will be added over the coming months, so do keep checking back here.
Mary L. Shannon
Dustin Frazier Wood
The Romantic Illustration Network Shakespeare Gallery by Frederick Burwick and the Romantic Illustration Network is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Digitised by the University of Roehampton.
Front Matter to the Boydells’ two-volume Collection of Prints
Antony and Cleopatra
As You Like It
Comedy of Errors
Coriolanus
Cymbeline
Hamlet
Julius Caesar
King Henry the Fourth, Part I
King Henry the Fourth, Part II
King Henry the Fifth
King Henry the Sixth, Part I
King Henry the Sixth, Part II
King Henry the Sixth, Part III
King Henry the Eighth
King Lear
King Richard the Third
Measure for Measure
Merchant of Venice
Merry Wives of Windsor
Much Ado About Nothing
Othello
Romeo and Juliet
Taming of the Shrew
The Tempest
Timon of Athens
Titus Andronicus
Troilus & Cressida
Two Gentlemen of Verona
