John Boydell
Born Dorrington, Salop, 19 Jan 1719; died London, 12 Dec 1804.
English engraver and print-seller. The son of a land surveyor, Boydell at first pursued his father’s occupation. In 1731 the family moved to Hawarden in Flintshire (now Clwyd), Wales, where he began making copies of book illustrations. He saw an engraving of Hawarden Castle (c. 1740) by William Henry Toms (c. 1700–c. 1750) that induced him to go to London in 1740 to become Toms’s apprentice. He also enrolled in the St Martin’s Lane Academy. In 1746 he established himself as an independent engraver with a shop on the Strand, where he produced inexpensive topographical prints and published his first collection of engravings, The Bridge Book (c. 1747). In 1751 he moved to a larger shop in Cheapside, where he began to import landscape prints after Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa. Boydell paid unprecedented sums to William Woollett to engrave Claude’s Temple of Apollo (c. 1760; painting 1663; Anglesey Abbey, Cambs, NT) and Richard Wilson’s Destruction of the Children of Niobe (1761; painting c. 1759–60; New Haven, CT, Yale Cent. Brit. A.), both of which were commercially successful. His low-cost publication, A Collection of One Hundred and Two Views, &c, in England and Wales (1755), likewise sold a large number of copies.
Never more than a mediocre engraver himself, Boydell virtually stopped engraving in order to capitalize on the growing print market in England. He increased his fortune through sales of Woollett’s line-engraving after Benjamin West’s popular and controversial Death of General Wolfe (1776; painting 1770; Ottawa, N.G.). Boydell’s discovery of the European market for English prints and his subsequent dealings in print exports established his reputation internationally. His growing respectability resulted in his appointment as Alderman for Cheapside (1785), Sheriff of London (1785) and Lord Mayor of London (1790–91).
Boydell’s success encouraged him to embark on his most ambitious project, the ‘Shakespeare Gallery’. This idea was first proposed, possibly by George Romney, at a dinner party in November 1786 as a means of creating patronage for history painting in England. It consisted of three elements: a series of oil paintings representing scenes from Shakespeare’s plays; a folio collection of engravings after the paintings; and a new edition of Shakespeare’s plays (published 1802), edited by George Steevens (1736–1800), also with accompanying engravings. Boydell risked an enormous sum on this venture, relying on the popularity of Shakespeare’s plays and the stability of the European market. The Gallery opened at 52 Pall Mall on 4 May 1789 with 34 paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Henry Fuseli, Joseph Wright of Derby, James Northcote and others. Although some works were praised, critics attacked the artists’ inaccurate interpretations of the plays and impugned Boydell’s motives. Among the most savage attacks was James Gillray’s print Shakespeare Sacrificed: Or the Offering to Avarice (20 June 1789). Subscribers to the prints became disgruntled at the long delays, and Boydell’s employment of a quick, but sometimes sloppy, stipple technique in order to speed up production caused further criticism. The outbreak of war with France in 1793 destroyed his hopes for expanding his export market.
During the 1790s Boydell financed other ventures. He paid James Heath 2000 guineas for a line-engraving after John Singleton Copley’s Death of Major Pierson (1796; painting 1783; London, Tate), but the years Heath took to make the engraving diminished public interest in the once-topical subject. Boydell also commissioned and donated portraits and paintings of episodes from English history, such as Northcote’s Death of Wat Tyler (1786–7; destr. 1940), to the Common Council Chamber at the Guildhall, London. He began to publish William Combe’s An History of the River Thames (1794–6) with topographical engravings by Joseph Farington, but adverse critical reaction halted the project. Boydell’s various failures forced him to sell off his stock by a lottery, which was held a month after his death, on 28 January 1805. The subsequent sale of the Shakespeare Gallery pictures at Christie’s fetched only £6182 for the lottery winner. Despite the eventual failure of his attempt to revive history painting in England, Boydell was a central figure in the growth of 18th-century English engraving.
Shearer West. "Boydell, John." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T010715 (accessed May 1, 2012).
