though he was not yet prepared to patronise a
British painter. Immense sums were cleared by John Boydell over
Woollett's engravings after West and Copley; illustrated books, more
especially of travel, were eagerly bought up; illustrated magazines
flooded the market; print-shops multiplied, their windows "glazed with
libels" in the shape of coloured caricatures; and foreign artists,
engravers, and miniaturists flocked to the English Eldorado. In 1790 it
was stated in a trade pamphlet that the prints exported from England at
that time, as compared with those imported from France, were in the
proportion of five hundred to one!

RUDOLF ACKERMANN

The French Revolution, and the wars that followed, temporarily ruined
our foreign trade in prints, the great fortune that Boydell had made by
his judicious speculation in the talents of his countrymen, melting away
under these adverse influences, and leaving him a ruined man by 1802.
But as Boydell's star sank, that of another art-publisher, presumably
less dependent on foreign trade, rose above the horizon. Rudolf
Ackermann (1764-1834), the son of a Saxon coachbuilder, came to London
about 1775, and after ten years spent in making designs for
coachbuilders, set up for himself in the Strand as an art-publisher and
dealer in fancy goods. Ackermann proved himself a man of really
remarkable energy and initiative, with a mind always open to the
reception of new ideas, and a spirit of commercial enterprise that was
based upon artistic taste and sound judgment. He was also one of the few
men who have ever successfully combined business and philanthropy on a
large scale. During the years that followed the Reign of Terror, he was
the chief employer of the French _emigres_ in London, finding occupation
for no fewer than fifty nobles, priests, and ladies, in the manufacture
of screens, card-racks, and other articles for his "fancy department."
Irrespective of his business as an art-publisher, this extraordinary man
patented an invention for rendering cloth and paper waterproof, made
experiments in air-balloons for the dissemination of news in war-time,
designed Nelson's funeral-car, introduced lithography for the purposes
of art-illustration into this country, raised and distributed a large
sum for the relief of sufferers after the battle of Leipsic, undertook
the same good offices for the Prussian soldiers after Waterloo, and was
a generous employer to the Spanish exiles who took refuge