Note 370 — A BOOK FOR A RAINY DAY (continued 3)

At the Royal Academy dinner of 1789 the health of Alderman Boydell as “the Commercial Mæcenas of England” was proposed by Edmund Burke. It was in this year that the Alderman began to exhibit in Pall Mall the works which he had commissioned for his Shakespeare Gallery. Next year he became Lord Mayor. Unfortunately, he miscalculated his financial powers, and the outbreak of the French Revolution entailed on him such loss of foreign custom that his death in 1804 was clouded by misfortune. He had employed nearly all the best artists and engravers of his day, and had spent £350,000 in his business. His Shakespeare Gallery, consisting of 170 pictures, was disposed of by lottery; the winner being Tassie, the gem-modeller, who sold them at Christie’s for £6157.