Chapter 4 - Poetry against the Wall

Summary

Chapter 4 examines the dissolution of the Shakspeare Gallery and the crisis in the visual arts around the time of its closure in 1805. By the turn of the century, the cultural attitude toward illustrated books was beginning to shift. While the public remembered Boydell fondly, painters and engravers carefully distanced themselves from their old benefactor and his commercial model. Antiquarian connoisseurs, whose influence had largely been staved off by the literary galleries, again sought to gain control of visual taste, and rancorous aesthetic debates and professional enmity spilled into public view.