Page:Repository of Arts, Series 1, Volume 01, 1809, January-June.djvu/72

54 again to the day of her death, which did not happen for soma years afterwards.

This room is famous on another account, having been the scene of Mr. Thelwall's early political lectures. When the interposition of government put a stop to this exhibition, Mr. A. purchased the lease; and it became once more the peaceful academy of drawing, upon a very extended scale, employing three masters in the separate branches of this art, one for figures, a second for landscape, and a third for architecture. But the increase of Mr. Ackermann's business as a publisher, printseller, and manufacturer of fancy articles, rendered the convenience of this room as a warehouse a more desirable object than the profit to he derived from it as an academy. For eight or ten years previous to entering so largely in the fancy business, Mr. A. had been employed in furnishing the principal coachmakers with designs and models for new and improved carriages. Among many instances of his taste and abilities in this line, the state coach built for the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, in 1790, which cost over 7000l. and one for the Lord Mayor of Dublin in the following year, were designed and modelled by him. It has been said, that Philip Godsal, Esq. who has the model of the Lord Lieutenant's coach, has actually refused one hundred guineas for it, and it is more than probable, he would not sell it for twice that sum.

During the period when the French emigrants were so numerous in this country, Mr. A. was among the first to strike out a liberal and easy mode of employing them, and he had seldom less than fifty nobles, priests, and ladies of distinction, at work upon screens, card-racks, flower-stands, and other ornamental fancy-works of a similar nature. Since the decree permitting the return of the emigrants to France, this manufacture has been continued by native artists, who execute the work in a very superior style: but it is impossible in this place to notice the great variety of articles which it embraces. The public are referred to a catalogue of near 100 pages, which conveys every information that can be necessary, and will be our apology for omitting any further observations; we shall therefore only add, that since Mr. A. has given up the academy, he has substituted a port-folio of prints and drawings for the use of pupils and dilitanti, upon the plan of a circulating library of books, the terms of which are as follow:

The money paid at the time of subscribing. The subscribers are allowed to take the value of their subscription money in prints or drawings, and may change them as often as they please.

The design of the chaise longue [sic] is Grecian, and should be executed as to its frame-work wholly in mat and burnished gold, when chasteness of execution is desired; the