Wednesday, January 15, 1997
Two hundred years ago, publisher Josiah Boydell commissioned
artists to paint the most famous scenes from Shakespeare’s plays.
Now the Armand Hammer Museum offers a look at Shakespearean
interpretations of the past and present in ‘The Boydell Shakespeare
Gallery.’By Stephanie Sheh
Daily Bruin Contributor
After years of studying Shakespeare, the average college student
finds it difficult to appreciate the Bard. The student equates
Shakespeare with deciphering monologues, analyzing sonnets and
brooding over complicated plots, forgetting that Shakespeare was
originally a visual medium.
However, with the opening of "The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery"
exhibit tonight at the UCLA Armand Hammer Museum, students as well
as the public will have a chance to appreciate Shakespeare through
the artistic lines of prominent painters rather than through lines
of iambic pentameter. The exhibition runs in conjunction with a
lecture series titled "Shakespeare Then, Then and Now" which covers
topics from alternate versions of Shakespeare to 20th century movie
adaptations.
The exhibit, organized by UCLA’s Grunwald Center for the Graphic
Arts, is based upon the works from the Shakespeare Gallery that
printer and publisher Josiah Boydell opened from 1789 to 1805.
Boydell commissioned numerous famous artists to paint scenes from
Shakespeare productions which gallery goers paid to see.
"This is the first major commercialization in the world of
Shakespeare as a famous playwright," says David Rodes, lecturer and
director of the Grunwald Center. "Shakespeare had always been
appreciated as a playwright even in his own time. People noted that
Shakespeare was probably the best playwright that England ever
produced, but not until David Garrick and other great actors in the
middle of the 18th century started performing Shakespeare in
flamboyant new productions did Shakespeare become a kind of God
like he is now."
Rodes continues, "Nevertheless, this is the first example of
some commercial enterprise taking advantage of the fact that you
can sell things related with Shakespeare."
In those days the gallery goers did not only have the
opportunity to see Shakespearean plays as great works of art, but
they could take a little piece of Shakespeare home with them. The
paintings in the gallery were engraved and made into prints. The
public could then buy the prints of the paintings they had just
seen in the exhibit.
"(Boydell) had a very keen sense that when you got people to pay
money to go look at these big paintings, they obviously couldn’t
take these paintings home with them," Rodes says.
But the public could still express their appreciation for the
art. "(Boydell) would then produce these engravings and they could
buy those. They could buy one or two or 20 and take them home and
frame them and hang them on their walls or put them in their
libraries," Rodes says. "So he had the paintings there for them to
pay money to see and then they could buy the engravings and take
them home with them."
Lecturer Frederick Burwick, an English professor at UCLA,
published the catalog for the Boydell exhibit. He adds, "Who could
afford to buy a painting? Only the aristocracy. Paintings before
belonged in the church and the aristocracy. With the popularity of
the engraving, in the late 18th century, you have commercialization
of arts. So now anybody could afford it. The middle class could buy
art for their home."
Some of the paintings have survived, but are scattered
throughout the world, so the works shown at the Hammer are prints
of the engravings. The engravings are very detailed and of high
quality. The only differences between the engravings and the
paintings are their sizes and the the fact that the engravings are
in black and white.
"There’s a big painting which is now I think lost, where it
shows Juliet dead in her bridal chamber," Rodes says. "You see this
very very dramatic scene which has her father and mother, the
(fiance) Paris and all the wedding guests who’ve arrived for the
ceremony looking horrified that Juliet is dead. They think that she
is dead, but she’s taken this sleeping potion in order to avoid
having to marry Paris. The people who came to the Boydell picture
gallery were so offended that the wedding guests would have been
allowed in Juliet’s chamber, that Boydell had to go have this
painter to paint out all the wedding guests.
"But by then the prints had already been made. So you get the
prints showing the room full of the wedding guests, but the
painting was changed, because people were so offended by the notion
that just anybody could crowd into a virgin girl’s bridal chamber,"
Rodes says.
As well as reflecting some of the ideas of that time period, the
engravings also show how Shakespeare was performed at that time.
Rodes says it is exciting to have such a detailed visual
information about the stylistics of Shakespearean performance
during the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th
century.
Burwick points out that the idea of historical accuracy in
Shakespearean plays first occurred during Boydell’s period. This
concern with historicity can be seen in the costumes of the actors
in the paintings.
"They really tried to make the prince of Denmark look like a
16th century Danish prince," Burwick says. "They have studied
costumes. Macbeth is going to show up for the first time wearing a
kilt.
"Some of them are very accurate. Some of them are totally
fanciful. Some of them are naked," Burwick continues. " (The
artist) Fuseli has Titania in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ in her
bare skin. I’m sure she was never played that way at Druery Lane.
He had ‘Henry V’ with a very funny pair of tights and feathers in
his hat, big ostrich plumes. I’m sure Henry V never wore ostrich
plumes in his hat. So some of the costumes are totally fanciful,
but some of them are very, very accurate."
Not only do the engravings tell us about how Shakespeare was
performed in that time period, but it tells us something about the
actual shift in artistic movements as well  the end of the
18th century and the beginning of the 19th century marked the shift
from Neoclassicism to Romanticism.
Rodes explains, "Some of these artists and some of these print
makers are showing a very neoclassical, very stately symmetrical
organized version of Shakespeare production, but others are showing
us a new exciting style in Shakespeare and in culture called
romanticism, which is asymmetrical and interested in passion more
than reason.
"We’ve also got documentation of stylistic and philosophical
shifts between one great style to another, so it’s a terrific
opportunity to look at a variety of important issues to cultural
historians to theater historians, to literary people and others,"
Rodes says.
ART: "The Boydell Shakespeare Gallery" exhibit opens tonight.
Admission to the exhibit is $4.50 for adults; $3 for seniors,
non-UCLA students, UCLA faculty/staff; $1 for UCLA students. The
lecture series "Shakespeare Then, Then and Now" runs Tuesdays from
Jan. 14 through Feb. 25. Each lecture costs $10. For more
information call (310) 443-7000 or (310) 443-7094.
UCLA Armand Hammer Museum
In this interpretation of "Antony and Cleopatra," Act 3, Scene
9, features Emma Hamilton posing for the part of the penitent and
fainting Cleopatra.