Shakespeare's King Lear, early proof
date: label: Date made
content: 1792
name: label: referenced
content: Shakespeare, William
label: publisher
content: Boydell, John
label: publisher
content: Boydell, Josiah
label: original artist
content: West, Benjamin
label: maker
content: Sharp, William
notes: label: Description
content: Shakespeare's plays have engaged audiences for centuries, and his theatrical subject matter has influenced the visual arts as well. In the 1790s, London publishers John and Josiah Boydell opened the "Shakspeare Gallery" filled with paintings commissioned
label: Description
content: to depict scenes from the plays. One hundred of these images were engraved as large prints and proved to be so popular that several editions were published, including an American edition in the 1840s.
label: Description
content: <I>King Lear,</I> showing Lear in the storm from Act III, Scene iv, was engraved in 1793 by William Sharp (1749–1824) after the painting by Benjamin West (1738–1820). This dramatic scene was considered a powerful moral lesson representing energy of thought and action. The painting came to the United States in 1807, part of the collection of engineer Robert Fulton (1765–1815). It was exhibited in Philadelphia, Boston, and New York and is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
label: Description
content: Many collectors considered Sharp's engraving of King Lear the finest of the prints in Boydells' Shakspeare Gallery series. Vermont Congressman George Perkins Marsh and President Thomas Jefferson owned prints from the Shakspeare Gallery. This impression from the original English edition came to the Museum in 1979 as a bequest from the family of American artist Stephen Alonzo Schoff (1818–1904), a bank-note engraver who also produced prints in larger formats. Schoff studied art in Europe between 1839 and 1841, and he acquired a significant collection of European and American prints to serve as his working visual library. He owned this preliminary etched proof prepared in an acid bath and a final state of the print finished by hand with the burin, an engraver's cutting tool.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
topic: label: Subject
content: Theater
setName: label: See more items in
content: Work and Industry: Graphic Arts
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content: Popular Entertainment
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content: Art
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Estate of Leonard Hastings Schoff
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1979.0114.167
label: accession number
content: 1979.0114
label: catalog number
content: 1979.0114.167
label: catalog number
content: 79.0114.167
objectType: label: Object Name
content: print
label: Other Terms
content: print; Etching
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: ink (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: sheet: 45.75 cm x 58.8 cm; 18 in x 23 1/8 in