Macklin was born in 1752 or 1753 and his father may have been the Reverend Garrard Macklin of the Kingdom of Ireland. He also held an annual exhibition in
Pall Mall, like
John Boydell and his
Shakespeare Gallery. However, the
war with France cut into his profits, as prints could not be traded across the channel, and his partner, Edward Rogers, died. The project produced paintings by
Joshua Reynolds,
Henry Fuseli,
Thomas Gainsborough,
John Opie,
Angelica Kauffman,
Thomas Stothard, and
Francis Wheatley. 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 realise 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, 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. ==Gallery==