from Ackermann’s ‘Microcosm of London, the interior of the newly-established private society, The British Institution for Promoting the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom, founded in 1805 on the site of the old Shakespeare Gallery of the print publisher, John Boydell, the institution’s exclusive private patronage by wealthy connoisseurs often setting it at odds with the artists it sought to promote, though it established a popular regular program of alternating exhibitions of old master paintings and sales of contemporary art, until it closed in the 1860s,
original hand-coloured engraving, with aquatint by John Bluck, 235 x 275 mm. (9 1/4 x 10 7/8 in), slight damp-staining in the upper margin,