PROGRAMME DETAILS FOR THE 188TH SEASON 2011/2012

TUESDAY 17 APRIL 2012
DR PAUL LEWIS

Formerly Head of Media and Cultural Studies, University of Wolverhampton

Paul Lewis read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, and History of European Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. He has published on the history and theory and criticism of photography and is interested in the diversity of audiences for the visual arts form the mid-eighteenth century onwards.

The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery

Alderman John Boydell, later Lord Mayor of London, opened the Shakespeare Gallery at 52 Pall Mall in 1789. This patriotic enterprise was to be the climax of his immensely successful print-publishing and civic careers. Most of the major British painters of the day were commissioned to illustrate scenes from the plays often with spectacular results. The gallery closed in 1805 and the pictures, which might have formed the core of a hoped-for National Gallery, are now dispersed, lost or known to be cut-down or destroyed. Their appearance, however is preserved by a series of engravings published in 1803 and these had a long and wide influence. This illustrated talk examines Boydell's venture in the context of contemporary arts and entertainments in London, changing views of national identity and new considerations of Shakespeare.

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