UNUSUAL COLLECTION OF 100 LARGE FOLIO ENGRAVINGS FOR BOYDELL’S MONUMENTAL SHAKESPEARE

BOYDELL, John. Boydell's Graphic Illustrations of the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare. (London: Boydell, 1804). Large folio (13 by 17 inches), modern blue cloth, morocco spine label. $5500.

Collection of 100 large folio engraved plates from the sumptuous Boydell Shakespeare, after paintings by the period’s most eminent English artists— including Reynolds, Romney, Smirke, Stothard, Fuseli and Westall, with one plate engraved by William Blake.

"Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery completely altered the course of English painting. Most painters earned their livings by painting portraits for the wealthy nobility, but when Boydell began to commission works from the best artists in England, they were free to explore other topics and themes, drawn first from Shakespeare's plays, then from other writers, and finally from the classics and English history. Boydell had almost single-handedly created a market for what was called 'history painting,' and painters had a source of income that was not rooted primarily in portraiture" (Friedman, 2). Boydell commissioned Shakespearian paintings from Reynolds, Fuseli, Smirke, Northcote, Porter, Stothard, Hamilton, Bunbury, Opie and Westall, and exhibited them in a specially built gallery in Pall Mall. By 1802 Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery contained 162 original paintings, from which he selected 96 to illustrate his monumental edition of Shakespeare. These images were "used repeatedly to illustrate the works of Shakespeare, and they appear in all sorts of modified, adapted, and borrowed forms in engravings and drawings that accompany the plays. Producers, directors and critics were all part of that public exposed to the Boydell prints" (Rusche). "There can be no doubt that Boydell's Shakespeare… was the most splendid of bibliophile editions undertaken in the 18th-century or at any other time… no printing press, which has hitherto existed, ever produced a work… so uniformly beautiful" (Franklin, 47-48). See Jaggard, 508; Franklin, 214-23. Bookplate of noted Blake collector William T. Moore. The rear pastedown includes Moore's notes on this volume, including the fact that this volume is composed of plates extracted from the 10-volume Shakespeare set; as such, it contains four more plates than were in the plate collection issued by Boydell himself: a frontispiece portrait of Boydell, two representations of Shakespeare, and the print "Shakespeare Nursed by Tragedy and Comedy" after the painting by George Romney. Moore's notes also include an extensive discussion of the difference between Blake's plate and the one executed by Jean Pierre Simon, both of which were after a painting by John Opie.

Plates exceptionally fresh and fine. An extraordinary collection.