Allan Cunningham, in his ‘Lives of Eminent British Artists,’ mentions that Sir Joshua Reynolds was at first opposed to Boydell’s project, as impracticable on such an immense scale, and Boydell, to gain his approbation and assistance, privately sent him a letter enclosing a L1000 Bank of England note, and requesting him to paint two pictures at his own price.  What sum was paid by Boydell for these pictures was never known.  A magnificent building was erected in Pall Mall to exhibit this immense collection, called the Shakspeare Gallery, which was for a long time the pride of London.

The first engravers of England were employed to transfer these gems to copper, and such artists as Sharp, Bartolozzi, Earlom, Thew, Simon, Middiman, Watson, Fyttler, Wilson, and many others, exerted their talents for years in this great work.  In some instances, the labor of more than five years was expended on a single plate, and proof impressions were taken for subscribers at almost every stage of the work.  At length in 1803, after nearly twenty years, the work was completed.  The price fixed (which was never reduced) was two guineas each for the first three hundred impressions, and the subscription list was then filled up at one guinea each, or one hundred guineas a set of one hundred plates.

Besides these subscriptions, large donations were made by many of the noblemen of England, to encourage the undertaking, and to enable Boydell to meet his enormous outlay.  The cost of the whole work, from the commencement, is said to have been about one million pounds sterling; and although the projector was a wealthy man when he commenced it, he died soon after its completion, a bankrupt to the amount, it is said, of L250,000.

After these plates were issued, Boydell petitioned Parliament to allow him to dispose of his gallery of paintings by a lottery.  The petition was granted, and the whole collection was thus disposed of.  One of the finest of these pictures, King Lear, by Sir Benjamin West, is now in the Boston Athenaeum.

One fact in relation to these plates gives great value to them.  “All the principal historical characters are genuine portraits of the persons represented in the play; every picture gallery and old castle in England was ransacked to furnish these portraits.”

BRIEF SKETCH OF A PLAN FOR AN AMERICAN NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART.

Public Galleries of Art are now regarded by the most enlightened men, and the wisest legislators, as of incalculable benefit to every civilized country. (See vol. i., page 6, of this work.) They communicate to the mind, through the eye, “the accumulated wisdom of ages,” relative to every form of beauty, in the most rapid and captivating manner.  If such institutions are important in Europe, abounding in works of art, how much more so in our country, separated as it is by the broad Atlantic from the artistic world, which few comparatively can ever visit:  many of our young artists, for the want of such an institution, are obliged to grope their way in the dark, and to spend months and years to find out a few simple principles of art.