Thomas Macklin

Just two years after beginning the Poet's Gallery, Macklin undertook to publish an illustrated folio Bible in multiple volumes to promote "'the glory of the English school' of painting and engraving and 'the interest of our HOLY RELIGION'". A new typeface and a new kind of paper were designed for the work. The finished Bible had 70 engraved plates, 16 of which were by Philippe Jacques de Louthenbourg. Many of the same artists who were participating in the Poet's Gallery worked on the Bible project. 703 people signed the subscription list, including George III. Macklin's Bible project was expensive to produce: he paid Reynolds £500 for his Holy Family, for example, and the total cost was estimated at £30,000. To realize this project, he was forced to sell some of the paintings from the Poet's Gallery by lottery in 1797.

Macklin died on 25 October 1800, just five days after the last large engraving was finished for the Bible. The vignettes were not finished until six weeks later. According to the ''Dictionary of National Biography'', "[t]he Macklin Bible endures as the most ambitious edition produced in Britain, often pirated but never rivalled."

Macklin's influence was felt in the world of the arts not only as a publisher but also as a patron. The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' records that he may have spent as much as £300,000 as a patron of the arts. Provided by Wikipedia