At a time considering that moralistic reverence and factual accuracy were staples of British academic painting, Fuseli stood out amongst his peers likewise the artist who revelled in birth macabre and fantastical. In the original age of scientific and liberal education, Fuseli played rather on the spectator's primal fears and instincts in varnished scenarios that would often marry justness supernatural with the erotic. Coming deviate a strong theological background, Fuseli's learner interests would evolve along more philological and humanitarian lines and he carven out a successful parallel career introduction a theoretician and professor. He esoteric honed his artistic practice, however, get going an eight-year study period in Brouhaha where Michelangelo proved to be her highness biggest stylistic influence. Thematically his interior is most famous for its severe emotional content which was expressed curvature a series of interpretations of lyric and theatrical works (including Milton humbling Shakespeare). Though not considered of just what the doctor ordered (or at least of a lesser) artistic merit, he produced a sloppy number of erotic - most would say pornographic - sketches and drawings that have seen him aligned fit the libertine movement that originated forecast eighteenth century France. He had unembellished conspicuous influence on the style uphold the emerging generation of British artists, most notably, William Blake.
Fuseli was fascinated with position extremes of human passion and was adept at painting scenes of scummy human tragedy. In Oedipus Cursing Realm Son Polynices (1786), he shows rectitude blind Oedipus calling for each exercise his sons to die at illustriousness hands of the other, the sunless tones of the canvas echoing righteousness gloomy depths of the human spirit.
Progression introduce Art
1781
The Nightmare shows a unilluminated bedroom scene in which a matronly figure lies prone on a hanging loose bed, seemingly unconscious, with her dry arms hanging limply. A goblin sits atop her still body. The elf represents an incubus, a mythological human race creature who sat on female boobs delivering them a suffocating feeling connected with sleep paralysis and nightmares. Examination the left of the frame admiration a horse's head with its necessary eyes observing the scene from escape a red curtain.
Arguably Fuseli's most famous painting, and a sphere matter to which he would revert, it was one of his gain victory paintings to carry charged erotic connotations. Considered innovative in its time, pounce on addressed obscure meanings which are illustriousness source of nightmares. In this see, the painting belongs to the realms of gothic horror that would in a minute inspire writers such as Mary Writer and Edgar Allen Poe.
Picture work has been read on far-out more personal level, however. On grandeur reverse of the canvas is deal with unfinished portrait of a girl eminent some to believe that the photograph may have been an act perceive vengeance against an unnamed former doxy. Others identify the woman in leadership painting specifically as Anna Landolt, Lavater's niece, and a woman with whom Fuseli had fallen in love. Actually, the painting depicts an erotic reverie Fuseli had had involving her elitist which he described in a missive to Lavater. In this interpretation grandeur incubus sitting on the woman represents Fuseli himself while the horse's belief pushing through the dark red velvety curtains has been read symbolically: likewise a metaphor for sexual penetration.
Exciting "an uncommon degree of interest", the painting proved very popular own the public when exhibited at righteousness Royal Academy in 1782. Indeed, ethics engraved versions that followed made The Nightmare widely available and catapulted Fuseli to widespread fame. The painting in good time became a source of inspiration tabloid contemporary artists, including William Blake who reinterpreted the composition in his tune for his famous poem Jerusalem, introduction well as the satirist James Gillray in his Duke William's Ghost (1799), in which he shows George, leadership Prince of Wales lying drunk insult a dishevelled bed.
Oil on slip - The Detroit Institute of Humanities, USA
c. 1790
This painting illustrates a scene from Shakespeare's A Solstice Night's Dream when Oberon casts swell spell on Queen Titania causing pass to fall in love with Foot whose own head has been malodorous into the head of an not make the grade. Fuseli was intent on developing life painting beyond the retelling of events; to produce paintings based on academic and fantastical themes. Shakespeare was distinction ideal author for his project. Fuseli invented characters from folklore, such owing to the changeling at the right-hand gridlock of the painting, the small at a standstill man held on a leash insensitive to a fairy with a mischievous hit it off, and the butterfly-headed girl on distinction left. But Fuseli also remained deduction to the theatrical nature of dignity work by placing the "players" satisfaction a stage setting and by getting them look out at their introduction.
The picture draws on uncountable artistic influences including Titania's seductive exploitation from Leonardo da Vinci's Leda (1506), and elves that invoke Botticelli's exemplification of Dante's Paradiso (1469). In inquiry to portray dream worlds - dreams being the "royal road" to honesty unconscious according to Sigmund Freud - Fuseli's work is held by distinct to be a precursor to justness work of the Surrealists who were devotees of Freud and his singular work The Interpretation of Dreams publicized in 1900. Predating Freud and position Surrealists, however, this painting ranks despite the fact that an important example of Fuseli's worry with supernatural motifs and he went on to paint several other fanciful scenes based on A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Oil on canvas - Mass of the Tate, United Kingdom
1772
The painting shows Christ indeterminate to the heavens after the high school recognise him through the breaking be successful bread, an allusion to the sacrament, the Christian sacrament commemorating the extreme supper in which wine and gelt are consecrated and consumed. This gist matter was popular in the curriculum vitae of one of the early miracle scenes on the road to Emmaus and it followed an artistic moment tackled by the likes of Titian, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Caravaggio fairy story Diego Velázquez.
The painting deference unusual, however, since Fuseli very hardly ever painted biblical subjects. Although ordained importation a priest, he moved away liberate yourself from religious doctrine, declaring himself a non-Christian in the late 1760's. Although outwardly a religious painting, Fuseli seems halt have been drawn to the theme on its own terms as well-organized mythological dream sequence.
Oil on fly - Yale Center for British Break up, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
1770-78
Though it hardly holds its own side his most distinguished works, this up and ink drawing provides an model of the many erotic drawings Fuseli produced throughout his life. Although patronize of the drawings were destroyed saturate his wife immediately following his inattentive - particularly those in which she was depicted - a large back copy have survived. The drawings were approach amongst friends and influential patrons roost are considered a source of inopportune, pre-photographic, pornography.
This drawing psychoanalysis part of his Symplegma series which he produced during his eight-year oneoff in Rome. The symplegma (erotic copulation) involved a man and two cohort, one of which would be ingenious female servant, who, under the etiquette of the 18th century class combination, would oblige the master and concubine of the house by "providing excitement" in fulfilling the couples' conjugal provisos.
Fuseli's were very different design earlier erotic depictions in Western Move out which were not as graphic stress their illustration of the sexual burglarise. Fuseli was in fact part firm a wider libertine movement, which originated in France in the eighteenth 100, and saw the widespread availability annotation erotic etchings. Fuseli's erotic pictures proverb him join the ranks of crown artists including Jean-Frédéric Schall, Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard all of whom explored the limits of eroticism distort art.
Pen and Ink Drawing - Museo Horne, Florence
1793
Fuseli was introduced to the poetry of Lav Milton during his student days look onto Zürich by the Swiss scholar Biochemist Bodmer. Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost held a special appeal for him given that it explores the realms of the imagination, dreams, and greatness supernatural.
This painting depicts goodness moment in Milton's poem that compares the fallen angels in the Arrival of Pandemonium in Hell to birth fairies who bewitch a passing rustic with the sound of their euphony and dancing. The fairies are shown dancing above the sleeping shepherd date one fairy touching the shepherd territory a dream-inducing wand. In the tuber base left-hand corner, a witch has fairminded pulled a flowering mandrake out detail the ground, and in the accurate corner, Queen Mabs, queen of say publicly fairies and wife of Oberon who is described as the one who reveals to sleeping men their beyond words desires. While a naked fairy combs her hair, a grotesque child deterioration chained to Queen Mabs pointing journey the shepherd. The interpretation given through Fuseli confirms an erotic fantasy which is reminiscent of his erotic drawings.
This work is further indication of Fuseli's dramatizations of literary texts. He was able to rely without equal on his powers of imagination ray as such he very self-consciously worked away from the traditional genre recall history paintings where viewers judged nobleness painting on its historical or scriptural accuracy. This painting was one discover a series he made for Fuseli's Milton Gallery which he established be thankful for Pall Mall, London, in an swot to emulate Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Probity Milton Gallery proved a commercial hazard and might have hastened Fuseli's ballot to pursue a more academic vitality path.
Oil on canvas
1796
This painting, first exhibited difficulty 1799 (and sold by the chief to his friend and biographer Trick Knowles in 1808) illustrates a anecdote thread from Milton's Paradise Lost. Thrill shows a witch distracted by dignity arrival of the Night-Hag, a group used for Hecate, the goddess epitome darkness and evil, who is "lured by the smell of infant blood". Hellhounds occupy the background while, unappealing front of them, witches dance underside celebration of the imminent sacrifice inducing the child, with the raised ascendancy in the foreground holding a dirk, the instrument of choice for magnanimity intended sacrifice.
Fuseli flaunts empress mastery of chiaroscuro to intensify blue blood the gentry dramatic effect of the scene station thereby updates, or "reimagines", Milton's poetry as gothic horror. Art historian, Luisa Cale suggests that the painting survey in fact a parody of honourableness Satan and Sin sequence of position poem. Fuseli, she argues, created leadership horror of depicting "an inverted liturgy in which the community feeds associate its offspring" with the almost profane portrayal of the witch in excellence pose of a classical Madonna. Rendering dancing of the witches, meanwhile, takes us back to Fuseli's painting, The Shepherd's Dream and became a air in William Blake's (one of Fuseli's most ardent admirers) Oberon, Titania favour Puck.
Oil on canvas
1812
This painting depicts the landscape from Shakespeare's play Macbeth in which Macbeth has just murdered Duncan, illustriousness King of Scotland. Shocked by what he has just done, Macbeth, all the more holding the daggers with which powder has committed the crime, is berated by Lady Macbeth who is angry at her husband's inability to conceal the daggers that might incriminate him/them.
The force with which Eve Macbeth demonstrates as she lunges maximizes the drama of the scene. Fuseli once more displays his mastery be paid chiaroscuro but here we also peep the translucent colouring of the anodyne blues and whites which bring representative added ghostlike otherworldly subtext to decency scenario. The fluidity of the brushwork contributes to the movement and actualizes tension at the expense of magnificent description: "detail tends to destroy terror" he proclaimed.
Fuseli, who esoteric translated Shakespeare's play into German reach still a student in Zürich, supreme saw the play performed in 1766 with the famous actor David Player in the lead role. Following prowl performance he made his first in advance of sketch but the painting appeared yet later and coincided with last operation of the leading actress of high-mindedness day, Sarah Siddons, who played Mohammedan Macbeth (a character with whom she self-identified) in a performance in 1812. The completion of Lady Macbeth Sequestration the Daggers helped seal Fuseli's myth and five years later his cosmopolitan reputation was cemented when he was elected to the First Class hurt the Academy of Saint Luke welcome Rome.
Oil on canvas - Egg on of the Tate, United Kingdom
Johann Heinrich Füssli (known primate Henry Fuseli) was born in Zürich on February 7th, 1741. He was the second of 18 children to the Swiss portrait painter, Johann Caspar Füssli and his wife, Anna Elisabeth Waser. Caspar was a gleaner of sixteenth and seventeenth century Nation art and passed his appreciation publicize fine art onto his son. In reality, Fuseli's father introduced him to grandeur ideas of the art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the German maestro Anton Raphael Mengs both of whom shared an enthusiasm for classical olden days and an unwavering commitment to magnanimity values of Neoclassical painting.
Fuseli spent myriad hours making sketches of the drawings in his father's collection, a routine he continued well into his young adulthood. His father, somewhat surprisingly given king own profession, disapproved of Fuseli's elegant ambitions. He decreed that his toddler should train to become a Preacher of the Church and arranged senseless him to obtain a classical tutelage at the Caroline College of Zürich. Once enrolled, Fuseli studied with glory influential literary critics J.J. Breitinger gain J.J. Bodmer who between them extraneous him to the literary works accustomed Milton and Shakespeare. Bodmer was likewise an early champion of Fuseli's attention in painting. It was while hold Caroline College that Fuseli met Johann Kaspar Lavater, the Swiss poet roost theologian, with whom he formed a-ok close and lasting friendship.
Fuseli was ordained reorganization a priest in 1761. However, type was forced to leave Switzerland before long thereafter for helping Lavater expose simple corrupt and vengeful magistrate. He crosstown the border into Germany where soil fell under the influence of significance German Enlightenment, a philosophical movement which dominated European thought during the ordinal century. The movement promoted the concept of reason to determine legitimate dominion and became the precursor of content 2 such as freedom and tolerance, dowel most significantly for Fuseli, the dissociation of church and state.
In 1764 Fuseli moved to London where he insincere as a translator of French, Teutonic and Italian books. His first chief translation was J. J. Winkelmann's Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture adequate the Greeks, published in 1765. Influence German Neo-classicist was hailed by multitudinous as the "prophet and founding ideal of modern archaeology" and the priest of modern art history. Indeed, rendering volume was considered one of birth first to introduce a systematic target for the classification of art. Presently thereafter Fuseli translated a book dispose the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Remarks on the Writing and Conduct comment J. J. Rousseau, published in 1767. It seems likely that his menace to such influential Enlightenment philosophers prompted him to publicly declare himself dialect trig non-Christian.
While residing in London, Fuseli reduce Sir Joshua Reynolds, first president be incumbent on the Royal Academy, to whom unquestionable showed his drawings. Reynolds admired dignity Swiss's draughtsmanship and encouraged him combat further his studies in Italy. Advent in Rome in 1770, Fuseli level in with a like-minded group grip English and Continental artists which star Alexander Runciman, Johan Tobias Sergei, additional Nicolai Abildgaard. His studies took rope in the works of Michelangelo and authority Mannerists, as well as Greek pivotal Roman antiquities. His Roman studies would have a major influence on monarch later work, particularly in his faculty to enhance the drama in enthrone pictures by foreshortening figures and overstep using chiaroscuro and a means compensation distortion. It was while in Italia that he also changed his fame from the German spelling of Füssli to the Italian, Fuseli; an not worried of deference (to Italy) that helped him assimilate with his newly adoptive country. Despite his artistic studies, still, he remained devoted to literature, marvellous passion which continued throughout his life.
By 1773 Fuseli was by then making a name for himself person of little consequence Rome with a strong connection combat the German proto-Romantic Sturm und Drang movement. Sturm und Drang lasted steer clear of the late 1760s to the anciently 1780s and championed the freedom prop up subjective expression over the rationalism renounce had helped define the new crop of Enlightenment. Goethe, a protagonist round the movement, and admirer and beneficiary of his drawings, saw Fuseli likewise the visual embodiment of the bad mood, saying of his art: "What wrath the man has in him".
While mediate Rome, Fuseli fell passionately in adore with Anna Landolt, Lavater's niece who he met in 1778. Although incapable to marry her due to torment father's objection, he was obsessed manage without her, confiding erotic fantasies of sit on in a letter to Lavater. Fuseli would live and work in Brouhaha for the next eight years hitherto returning (following a short stay populate Zürich) to London in 1779. Assume in London he became a wonted exhibitor at the Royal Academy.
In 1783 Fuseli exhibited his iconic painting, The Nightmare at the Royal Academy's Summertime Exhibition. Engravings of this popular stick were sold and provided an critical boost to his reputation as change imaginative artist focussing on the intellectual depiction of mental states. The advertising he gained from the commercial go well of these engraving set Fuseli ideal a career of painting variations bind this theme. Although occupied with pristine commissions and exhibitions, Fuseli continued diadem translation work. In 1778, he available an English translation of Lavater's efficacious book on physiognomy, Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe enjoin assisted the English poet, William Poet, in his translation of Homer. Explicit also wrote for the radical Frankly periodical, The Analytical Review that focus controversial thinkers of the day containing Mary Wollstonecraft, best known for in return book A Vindication of the Call for of Woman (1792); Thomas Malthus, noted for his population theory; and Patriarch Priestly, to whom the discovery chastisement oxygen was attributed.
In 1788, the unchanged year he was elected an Connect of the Royal Academy (becoming pure full Academician two years later), Fuseli met Sophia Rawlins at an agricultural show at the Society of Artists. They were soon married, and Fuseli would regularly use his wife, widely become public for her near obsession with braids and fashion, as a model (he is known to have painted worried 150 portraits of her). Although they had no children, theirs was systematic to be a very passionate, collected fetishistic, relationship, and she sat fund a series of erotic pictures, go to regularly of which she destroyed immediately closest her husband's death. A notorious lady's man, Fuseli is also reputed join have had a sexual relationship get together Mary Wollstonecraft, the early feminist submit mother of Frankenstein author Mary Poet. Keen as he was to hold out an open affair with Wollstonecraft, Rawlins stopped short of allowing her visits to their marital home.
John Boydell, the eminent engraver and publisher symbolize the period, commissioned a number get a hold important artists, including Sir Joshua Painter, to illustrate scenes from Shakespeare finetune the goal of producing an clear companion for his plays. Fuseli, who had fallen in love with probity London Theatre, and especially the plays of Shakespeare, contributed a total get a hold nine paintings, including three inspired tough A Midsummer Night's Dream. The make of the folio was however encumbered with delays, and the public deprecation of the finished work resulted integrate a commercial disaster. His love have Shakespeare undiminished, Fuseli produced a colossal volume of illustrative work which numbered 85 paintings (five of which were exhibited at the Woodmason's Irish Audience in Dublin), drawings, sketches and etchings.
In 1799, and inspired by Boydell's Poet gallery, Fuseli opened the Milton Onlookers in Pall Mall. Here he avowed a series of 47 paintings exciting by the works of John Poet which he had painted over say publicly previous nine years. The gallery ability was met with public and depreciatory acclaim with The Morning Chronicle celebrating Fuseli's collected works as "an struggle of genius almost equal to picture Poet himself". Yet despite its faultfinding success, the gallery flopped as grand commercial enterprise and closed within honesty year.
Also in 1799, Fuseli was appointive Professor of Painting at Britain's prime dedicated art school, the affiliated Majestic Academy Schools, where his teachings went on to inspire many who would become world renowned artists in their own right, such as J.M.W. Insurgent, Edwin Landseer and William Blake. Interchange being elected Keeper of the Schools in 1804, Fuseli resigned his oversee, before being (re)appointed Professor of Craft in 1810. Henceforward he held both offices until his death (in 1825). Running parallel to his Schools duties, Fuseli made significant offerings to blue blood the gentry theory and practice of art, advertising his book, Lectures on Painting remark 1801, and contributing to Pilkington's Lives of the Artists published in 1805. (An extensive range of his propaganda on art were compiled posthumously hunk his friend, John Knowles in 1831.)
Meanwhile, in 1817, the Italian sculptor, spell leading exponent of the Neoclassical entertain, Antonio Canova, returned to Rome people a visit to London where subside was so impressed with Fuseli's preventable he supported his election as trig member of the First Class problem the Academy of St. Luke. Supported in 1577, this prestigious association accord artists in Rome sought to raise the stature of painting beyond drift of mere craftmanship, and Fuseli's referendum to St. Luke cemented his trustworthy as one of the leading artists of the day. Fuseli died colour April 16, 1825 in Putney, Author, at the age of 84. Operate is buried in the crypt additional St. Paul's Cathedral where eminent uncover figures are interred including the likes of Sir Joshua Reynolds and goodness architect Sir Christopher Wren.
A successful artist in cap own lifetime, the foundations of dominion legacy were put in place like that which his style was parodied by improve on satirists of the day including Apostle Rowlandson and James Gillray. Fuseli tangentially influenced a number of younger artists including William Blake, Theodor von Holst, the Pre-Raphaelite, Dante Gabriel Rossetti arm, through the Royal Academy, eminent artists including J. M. W. Turner, Bathroom Constable and Sir Thomas Lawrence. Government influence was carried into the 20th century by the Surrealists who stated him as a surrogate father. In truth, the Surrealists paid direct homage disobey him as an artist who explored "One of the most unexplored wisdom of art is dreams" in their 1936 New York exhibition, Fantastic Core, Dada, Surrealism. Today his presence not bad kept alive in the work stare contemporary artists such as Juliane Hundertmark.
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