Shakespeare Sacrificed: Or the Offering to Avarice, etching and aquatint with engraving, hand-colored. "For much of the eighteenth century, English patricians collected Old Master paintings by European artists, virtually ignoring their own native painters. To address this slight and to create a school of English history painting, John Boydell, printseller and engraver, undertook a campaign to commission British artists to paint works on Shakespearean themes. The project was to be funded by the sale of prints engraved after those paintings, and ultimately assembled in an illustrated edition of Shakespeare. The first group of thirty-four paintings by eighteen artists went on view at Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery in May 1789; the first one hundred engravings were issued in a set of nine volumes in 1802. Unfortunately, war with France ended the export market for the Shakespeare engravings and led to Boydell’s ruin.