Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

Take a time machine back to 18th-century London and John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, visited by everyone who was anyone, from Jane Austen to the Prince of Wales. But why make a gallery devoted to Shakespeare? And who was Boydell?

One of 18th-century Britain’s most prolific narrative painters, Henry Fuseli found inspiration in Shakespeare, with his painting of Macbeth and the witches one of his “best poetical conceptions.”

During the late 18th and early 19th century, professional women artists in England were becoming more prominent and turning to Shakespeare for material.

A late eighteenth-century Shakespeare art museum is experiencing a second life as a detailed online re-creation, the brainchild of University of Texas English professor Janine Barchas.  John Boydell, a British publisher, commissioned depictions of Shakespeare scenes from well-known artists of the day: Joshua…