Henry Fuseli

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Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli, 1778. Portrait by James Northcote.

Born Johann Heinrich F�ssli
7 February 1741
Z�rich, Switzerland
Died 17 April 1825 (aged 84)
Putney Hill, London
Nationality Swiss
Known for painting, draughtsmanship
Notable work The Nightmare
Movement Romanticism
Spouse(s) Sophia Rawlins (m. 1788)
Henry Fuseli RA (German: Johann Heinrich F�ssli; 7 February 1741 � 17 April 1825)
was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in
Britain. Many of his works, such as The Nightmare, deal with supernatural subject-
matter. He painted works for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, and created his
own "Milton Gallery". He held the posts of Professor of Painting and Keeper at the
Royal Academy. His style had a considerable influence on many younger British
artists, including William Blake.

Contents
1 Biography
2 Works
3 Writings
4 Influence
5 Death
6 Gallery
7 Films
8 See also
9 References and sources
10 Further reading
11 External links
Biography

Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent was Fuseli's diploma work for the Royal Academy,
accepted 1790.
Fuseli was born in Z�rich, Switzerland, the second of 18 children. His father was
Johann Caspar F�ssli, a painter of portraits and landscapes, and author of Lives of
the Helvetic Painters. He intended Henry for the church, and sent him to the
Caroline college of Zurich, where he received an excellent classical education. One
of his schoolmates there was Johann Kaspar Lavater, with whom he became close
friends.[1]

After taking orders in 1761 Fuseli was forced to leave the country as a result of
having helped Lavater to expose an unjust magistrate, whose powerful family sought
revenge. He travelled through Germany, and then, in 1765, visited England, where he
supported himself for some time by miscellaneous writing. Eventually, he became
acquainted with Sir Joshua Reynolds, to whom he showed his drawings. Following
Reynolds' advice, he decided to devote himself entirely to art. In 1770 he made an
art-pilgrimage to Italy, where he remained until 1778, changing his name from
F�ssli to the more Italian-sounding Fuseli.[1]

Early in 1779 he returned to Britain, taking in Z�rich on his way. In London he

found a commission awaiting him from Alderman Boydell, who was then setting up his
Shakespeare Gallery. Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell, and published
an English edition of Lavater's work on physiognomy. He also gave William Cowper
some valuable assistance in preparing a translation of Homer. In 1788 Fuseli
married Sophia Rawlins (originally one of his models), and he soon after became an
associate of the Royal Academy.[1] The early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose
portrait he had painted, planned a trip with him to Paris, and pursued him
determinedly, but after Sophia's intervention the Fuselis' door was closed to her
forever. Fuseli later said "I hate clever women. They are only troublesome".[2] In
1790 he became a full Academician, presenting Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent as
his diploma work.[3] In 1799 Fuseli was appointed professor of painting to the
Academy. Four years later he was chosen as Keeper, and resigned his professorship,
but resumed it in 1810, continuing to hold both offices until his death.[1] As
Keeper, he was succeeded by Henry Thomson.

In 1799 Fuseli exhibited a series of paintings from subjects furnished by the works
of John Milton, with a view to forming a Milton gallery comparable to Boydell's
Shakespeare gallery. There were 47 Milton paintings, many of them very large,
completed at intervals over nine years. The exhibition proved a commercial failure
and closed in 1800. In 1805 he brought out an edition of Pilkington's Lives of the
Painters, which did little for his reputation.[1]

Antonio Canova, when on his visit to England, was much taken with Fuseli's works,
and on returning to Rome in 1817 caused him to be elected a member of the first
class in the Academy of St Luke.[1]

Works
As a painter, Fuseli favoured the supernatural. He pitched everything on an ideal
scale, believing a certain amount of exaggeration necessary in the higher branches
of historical painting. In this theory he was confirmed by the study of
Michelangelo's works and the marble statues of the Monte Cavallo,[1][4] which, when
at Rome, he liked to contemplate in the evening, relieved against a murky sky or
illuminated by lightning.[1]

Describing his style, the 1911 edition of the Encyclop�dia Britannica said that:

His figures are full of life and earnestness, and seem to have an object in view
which they follow with intensity. Like Rubens he excelled in the art of setting his
figures in motion. Though the lofty and terrible was his proper sphere, Fuseli had
a fine perception of the ludicrous. The grotesque humour of his fairy scenes,
especially those taken from A Midsummer-Night's Dream, is in its way not less
remarkable than the poetic power of his more ambitious works.[1]

Though not noted as a colourist,[1] Fuseli was described as a master of light and
shadow.[5] Rather than setting out his palette methodically in the manner of most
painters, he merely distributed the colours across it randomly. He often used his
pigments in the form of a dry powder, which he hastily combined on the end of his
brush with oil, or turpentine, or gold size, regardless of the quantity, and
depending on accident for the general effect. This recklessness may perhaps be
explained by the fact that he did not paint in oil until the age of 25.[1]

The Nightmare, (1781), Detroit Institute of Arts

Fuseli painted more than 200 pictures, but he exhibited only a small number of
them. His earliest painting represented "Joseph interpreting the Dreams of the
Baker and Butler"; the first to excite particular attention was The Nightmare,
exhibited in 1782.[1] He painted two versions, shown in the Nightmare article.
Themes seen in The Nightmare were repeated in his 1796 painting, Night-Hag visiting
the Lapland Witches.
His sketches or designs numbered about 800; they have admirable qualities of
invention and design, and are frequently superior to his paintings.[1] In his
drawings, as in his paintings, his method included deliberately exaggerating the
proportions of the human body and throwing his figures into contorted attitudes.
One technique involved setting down arbitrary points on a sheet, which then became
the extreme points of the various limbs.[1] Notable examples of these drawings were
made in concert with George Richmond when the two artists were together in Rome.
[citation needed] He rarely drew the figure from life, basing his art on study of
the antique and Michelangelo. He produced no landscapes�"Damn Nature! she always
puts me out," was his characteristic exclamation�and painted only two portraits.[1]

Many interesting anecdotes of Fuseli, and his relations to contemporary artists,

are given in his Life by John Knowles (1831).[1] He influenced the art of Fortunato
Duranti.

Writings

Henry Fuseli (aged 63) by Edward Hodges Baily, 1824, National Gallery, London
In 1788 Fuseli started to write essays and reviews for the Analytical Review. With
Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, Erasmus Darwin, Mary
Wollstonecraft, and others interested in art, literature and politics, Fuseli
frequented the home of Joseph Johnson, a publisher and prominent figure in radical
British political and intellectual life. He also visited Allerton Hall in
Liverpool, the home of William Roscoe.

When Louis XVI was executed in France in 1793, Fuseli condemned the revolution as
despotic and anarchic,[where?] although he had first welcomed it as a sign of "an
age pregnant with the most gigantic efforts of character".

He was a thorough master of French, Italian, English and German, and could write in
all these languages with equal facility and vigour, although he preferred German as
the vehicle of his thoughts. His principal work was his series of twelve lectures
delivered to the Royal Academy, begun in 1801.[1]

Influence
His pupils included John Constable, Benjamin Haydon, William Etty, and Edwin
Landseer. William Blake, who was 16 years his junior, recognized a debt to him, and
for a time many English artists copied his mannerisms.[citation needed]

Death
After a life of uninterrupted good health[1] he died at the house of the Countess
of Guildford on Putney Hill,[6] at the age of 84, and was buried in the crypt of St
Paul's Cathedral. He was comparatively wealthy at the time of his death.[1]

Gallery

The artist moved to despair at the grandeur of antique fragments, 1778�79

Anna Magdalena Schweizer, 1779

The artist in conversation with Johann Jakob Bodmer, 1778�1781

The death of Achilles, 1780.

The two murderers of the Duke of Clarence, 1780�1782

Titania and Bottom, c. 1790

Falstaff in the laundry basket, 1792

The Creation of Eve from Milton's Paradise Lost, 1793

Macbeth consulting the Vision of the Armed Head, 1793

The daughters of Pandareus, c.1795

Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis, 1794�1796

The Night-Hag visiting the Lapland Witches, 1796

Horseman attacked by a giant snake, c. 1800

Ariel, c. 1800�1810

Kriemhild and Gunther, 1807

Romeo stabs Paris at the bier of Juliet, c. 1809

Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers, 1810�12

Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, c. 1810�1820

Fairy Mab, 1815�20

Films
Passion and Obsession: Henry Fuseli, 1741-1825: painter and writer by Gaudenz Meili
and Prof. David H. Weinglass, Zurich 1997
See also
F�ssli, Johann Caspar (1706�1782), Swiss portrait painter (father of Henry Fuseli)
F�ssli, Johann Kaspar (1743�1786), Swiss entomologist (brother of Henry Fuseli)
References and sources
References
Encyclop�dia Britannica, 1911
Myrone, Martin (2001) Henry Fuseli. London: Tate Gallery Publishing, p. 53. ISBN
1854373579
Thor battering the Midgard Serpent, 1790. Royal Academy of Arts Collections, 5
February 2014. Retrieved 5 February 2014. Archived here.
Papal Palace on Monte Cavallo, Rome. Retrieved 2011-12-28.
Leslie, C. R. (1855). Tom Taylor, ed. Autobiographical Recollections (Letter to
Miss Leslie December 1816). Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
"Putney | Old and New London: Volume 6 (pp. 489�503)". British-history.ac.uk.
2003-06-22. Retrieved 2012-05-14.
Sources
"Johann Heinrich F�ssli". SIKART dictionary and database.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:
William Michael Rossetti (1911). "Fuseli, Henry". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclop�dia
Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Further reading
Cal�, Luisa. Fuseli's Milton Gallery: 'Turning readers into spectators'. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2006.
Keay, Carolyn. Henry Fuseli. London: Academy Editions, 1974.
Lentzsch, Franziska, et al. Fuseli: The Wild Swiss. Z�rich: Scheidegger & Spiess,
2005.
Myrone, Martin. Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination.
London: Tate Publishing, 2006.
Powell, Nicolas. Fuseli: The Nightmare. London: Allen Lane, 1973.
Pressly, Nancy L. The Fuseli Circle in Rome: Early Romantic Art of the 1770s. New
Haven: Yale Center for British Art, 1979.
Tomory, P. A. The Life and Art of Henry Fuseli. New York: Praeger, 1972.
Weinglass, David H. Henry Fuseli and the Engraver's Art. Boston: World Wide Books,
1982.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Johann Heinrich F�ssli.
External video
Fuseli's Titania and Bottom, Smarthistory
Works by Henry Fuseli at Project Gutenberg
Works by or about Henry Fuseli at Internet Archive
Works by Henry Fuseli at Open Library
Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections
Fuseli's Lecture on Painting 1801
Petri Liukkonen. "Henry Fuseli". Books and Writers
31 paintings by or after Henry Fuseli at the Art UK site
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Categories: 18th-century British paintersBritish male painters19th-century British
paintersBurials at St Paul's CathedralKeepers of the Royal AcademyBritish portrait
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