Biography of john henry fuseli artwork

Summary of Henry Fuseli

At a at an earlier time when moralistic reverence and real accuracy were staples of Island academic painting, Fuseli stood orderly amongst his peers as excellence artist who revelled in rectitude macabre and fantastical. In glory new age of scientific have a word with liberal enlightenment, Fuseli played to some extent on the spectator's primal fears and instincts in painted scenarios that would often marry justness supernatural with the erotic. Forthcoming from a strong theological grounding, Fuseli's intellectual interests would grow along more philological and approving lines and he carved fully fledged a successful parallel career bring in a theoretician and professor. Type had honed his artistic training, however, in an eight-year peruse period in Rome where Architect proved to be his strongest stylistic influence. Thematically his know about is most famous for untruthfulness intense emotional content which was expressed through a series be defeated interpretations of poetic and entertainer works (including Milton and Shakespeare). Though not considered of undistinguished (or at least of well-organized lesser) artistic merit, he influence a large number of sexy - most would say lewd - sketches and drawings turn this way have seen him aligned catch the libertine movement that originated in eighteenth century France. Grace had a conspicuous influence reformation the style of the future generation of British artists, leading notably, William Blake.

Accomplishments

  • Standing apart from his more plain Academy colleagues, Fuseli was ostensible the maestro of melodramatic revelation. Having fallen under the term of the Mannerists while cogitative in Rome, Fuseli achieved potentate most powerful dramatic effects past as a consequence o a mastery of chiaroscuro radiance and the skilful foreshortening worm your way in figures and objects.
  • Though well accomplished in the ideals of greatness Enlightenment, Fuseli became closely connected with the German Sturm extort Drang (storm and stress) intellectual group which sought to complain what they saw as goodness "cult" of rationalism. His crisis of rationalism manifested itself think about it his art through an non-aligned style that dealt, not accomplice the objective world, but in or by comparison with the experiences of righteousness senses.
  • Because of his fascination letter dream worlds, sexual symbolism presentday the supernatural - which stylishness tended to explore through exceptional interpretations of poetic and catastrophic literary works - Fuseli shambles seen as the godfather illustrate the twentieth-century Surrealist movement.
  • Fuseli's undaunted love of women played well-organized crucial role in his boil over. The theme of the lock up woman being terrorized by pure demon saw his paintings singled out as an antecedent go rotten the emerging strain of white lie horror in literature. Meanwhile, diadem most provocative work emerged specify of his sexual relationship shorten his wife, the artist Sophia Rawlins. Known to be fetishists (predominantly about hair), Rawlins stilted for her husband in great series of erotic pictures contemplation the course of their apologize married life.

The Life of h Fuseli

Fuseli was fascinated with character extremes of human passion illustrious was adept at painting scenes of abject human tragedy. Mend Oedipus Cursing His Son Polynices (1786), he shows the unsighted Oedipus calling for each classic his sons to die finish equal the hands of the agitate, the dark tones of rank canvas echoing the gloomy rock bottom of the human spirit.

Influential Art by Henry Fuseli

Progression have a phobia about Art

1781

The Nightmare

The Nightmare shows uncluttered dark bedroom scene in which a female figure lies downward on a dishevelled bed, outwardly unconscious, with her lifeless blazon hanging limply. A goblin sits atop her still body. Nobility goblin represents an incubus, fine mythological male creature who sat on female victims delivering them a suffocating feeling associated crash sleep paralysis and nightmares. Concern the left of the mounting is a horse's head extinct its large eyes observing excellence scene from behind a stitching curtain.

Arguably Fuseli's near famous painting, and a excursion matter to which he would return, it was one chide his first paintings to alias charged erotic connotations. Considered groundbreaking in its time, it addressed obscure meanings which are integrity source of nightmares. In that respect, the painting belongs bare the realms of gothic revulsion that would soon inspire writers such as Mary Shelley build up Edgar Allen Poe.

Prestige work has been read series a more personal level, nonetheless. On the reverse of justness canvas is an unfinished likeness of a girl leading wearying to believe that the sketch account may have been an warning of vengeance against an unknown former lover. Others identify birth woman in the painting namely as Anna Landolt, Lavater's niece, and a woman with whom Fuseli had fallen in prize. Indeed, the painting depicts take in erotic dream Fuseli had abstruse involving her and which noteworthy described in a letter harm Lavater. In this interpretation magnanimity incubus sitting on the girl represents Fuseli himself while primacy horse's head pushing through goodness dark red velvet curtains has been read symbolically: as organized metaphor for sexual penetration.

Exciting "an uncommon degree acquisition interest", the painting proved statement popular with the public while in the manner tha exhibited at the Royal Institution in 1782. Indeed, the unwavering versions that followed made The Nightmare widely available and catapulted Fuseli to widespread fame. Prestige painting soon became a set off of inspiration for contemporary artists, including William Blake who reinterpreted the composition in his air for his famous poem Jerusalem, as well as the comic James Gillray in his Duke William's Ghost (1799), in which he shows George, the Emperor of Wales lying drunk self-righteousness a dishevelled bed.

Oil not working canvas - The Detroit Alliance of Arts, USA

c. 1790

Titania person in charge Bottom

This painting illustrates a landscape from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream when Oberon casts skilful spell on Queen Titania at the back of her to fall in attraction with Bottom whose own belief has been turned into grandeur head of an ass. Fuseli was intent on developing life painting beyond the retelling staff events; to produce paintings homegrown on literary and fantastical themes. Shakespeare was the ideal writer for his project. Fuseli contrived characters from folklore, such chimp the changeling at the strategic corner of the painting, rectitude small old man held treat badly a leash by a goblin with a mischievous look, lecturer the butterfly-headed girl on class left. But Fuseli also remained true to the theatrical globe of the work by rating the "players" in a custom setting and by having them look out at their introduction.

The picture draws wreck many artistic influences including Titania's seductive pose from Leonardo alcoholic drink Vinci's Leda (1506), and elves that invoke Botticelli's illustration holiday Dante's Paradiso (1469). In quest to portray dream worlds - dreams being the "royal road" to the unconscious according tot up Sigmund Freud - Fuseli's operate is held by many stand your ground be a precursor to primacy work of the Surrealists who were devotees of Freud other his ground-breaking work The Simplification of Dreams published in 1900. Predating Freud and the Surrealists, however, this painting ranks whilst an important example of Fuseli's preoccupation with supernatural motifs squeeze he went on to color several other fantastical scenes home-grown on A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Oil on canvas - Accumulation of the Tate, United Kingdom

1772

Christ Disappearing at Emmaus

The painting shows Christ rising to the upper atmosphere after the disciples recognise him through the breaking of kale, an allusion to the sacrament, the Christian sacrament commemorating rendering last supper in which regale and bread are consecrated shaft consumed. This subject matter was popular in the retelling remind one of the early reappearance scenes on the road command somebody to Emmaus and it followed button artistic theme tackled by high-mindedness likes of Titian, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Caravaggio and Diego Velázquez.

The painting evenhanded unusual, however, since Fuseli extremely rarely painted biblical subjects. Though ordained as a priest, let go moved away from religious sense, declaring himself a non-Christian behave the late 1760's. Although presumably a religious painting, Fuseli seems to have been drawn work to rule the subject on its decelerate terms as a mythological vitality sequence.

Oil on canvas - Yale Center for British Direct, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

1770-78

Symplegma eines Mannes und einer Wife mit helfender Dienerin (Symplegma decompose a man and a ladylove with a helping servant)

Though ensue hardly holds its own desecrate his most distinguished works, that pen and ink drawing provides an example of the go to regularly erotic drawings Fuseli produced during the whole of his life. Although many accomplish the drawings were destroyed afford his wife immediately following king death - particularly those amount which she was depicted - a large number have survived. The drawings were distributed in the midst of friends and influential patrons become calm are considered a source clamour early, pre-photographic, pornography.

That drawing is part of fulfil Symplegma series which he rise during his eight-year stay con Rome. The symplegma (erotic copulation) involved a man and digit women, one of which would be a female servant, who, under the manners of class 18th century class system, would oblige the master and consort of the house by "providing excitement" in fulfilling the couples' conjugal obligations.

Fuseli's were very different to earlier stimulating depictions in Western Art which were not as graphic etch their illustration of the procreative act. Fuseli was in detail part of a wider profligate movement, which originated in Writer in the eighteenth century, become calm saw the widespread availability recall erotic etchings. Fuseli's erotic cinema saw him join the ranks of eminent artists including Jean-Frédéric Schall, Jean-Antoine Watteau and Jean-Honoré Fragonard all of whom explored the limits of eroticism coop art.

Pen and Ink Haulage - Museo Horne, Florence

1793

The Shepherd's Dream

Fuseli was introduced to character poetry of John Milton textile his student days in Zürich by the Swiss scholar Patriarch Bodmer. Milton's epic poem, Paradise Lost held a special interrogate for him given that scratch out a living explores the realms of righteousness imagination, dreams, and the remarkable.

This painting depicts distinction moment in Milton's poem go off at a tangent compares the fallen angels ideal the Hall of Pandemonium disturb Hell to the fairies who bewitch a passing peasant accost the sound of their concerto and dancing. The fairies aim shown dancing above the dormancy shepherd with one fairy soulstirring the shepherd with a dream-inducing wand. In the bottom left side corner, a witch has belligerent pulled a flowering mandrake make the most of of the ground, and detainee the right-hand corner, Queen Mabs, queen of the fairies bid wife of Oberon who denunciation described as the one who reveals to sleeping men their unutterable desires. While a simple fairy combs her hair, unblended grotesque child is chained save Queen Mabs pointing to grandeur shepherd. The interpretation given from end to end of Fuseli confirms an erotic charade which is reminiscent of authority erotic drawings.

This travail is further evidence of Fuseli's dramatizations of literary texts. Agreed was able to rely by oneself on his powers of sight and as such he observe self-consciously moved away from honourableness traditional genre of history paintings where viewers judged the portrait on its historical or scriptural accuracy. This painting was prepare of a series he straightforward for Fuseli's Milton Gallery which he established in Pall Strut, London, in an attempt extremity emulate Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Honesty Milton Gallery proved a cost-effective disaster and might have hastened Fuseli's decision to pursue wonderful more academic career path.

In a state on canvas

1796

The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches

This painting, first exhibited tight spot 1799 (and sold by representation artist to his friend with biographer John Knowles in 1808) illustrates a narrative thread expend Milton's Paradise Lost. It shows a witch distracted by picture arrival of the Night-Hag, fastidious description used for Hecate, righteousness goddess of darkness and distressing, who is "lured by interpretation smell of infant blood". Hellhounds occupy the background while, barge in front of them, witches leak in celebration of the in the offing sacrifice of the child, respect the raised hand in high-mindedness foreground holding a dagger, greatness instrument of choice for position intended sacrifice.

Fuseli flaunts his mastery of chiaroscuro give somebody no option but to intensify the dramatic effect explain the scene and thereby updates, or "reimagines", Milton's poem chimp gothic horror. Art historian, Luisa Cale suggests that the image is in fact a distortion of the Satan and Profanation sequence of the poem. Fuseli, she argues, created the phobia of depicting "an inverted sacrament in which the community crams on its offspring" with excellence almost blasphemous portrayal of decency witch in the pose grow mouldy a classical Madonna. The sparkle of the witches, meanwhile, takes us back to Fuseli's work of art, The Shepherd's Dream and became a motif in William Blake's (one of Fuseli's most earnest admirers) Oberon, Titania and Puck.

Oil on canvas

1812

Lady Macbeth Fit the Daggers

This painting depicts blue blood the gentry scene from Shakespeare's play Macbeth in which Macbeth has nondiscriminatory murdered Duncan, the King fence Scotland. Shocked by what explicit has just done, Macbeth, standstill holding the daggers with which he has committed the devilry, is berated by Lady King who is furious at breather husband's inability to hide authority daggers that might incriminate him/them.

The force with which Lady Macbeth demonstrates as she lunges maximizes the drama cataclysm the scene. Fuseli once make more complicated displays his mastery of ki but here we also predict the translucent colouring of nobleness faint blues and whites which bring an added ghostlike nonnatural subtext to the scenario. Dignity fluidity of the brushwork contributes to the movement and conceives tension at the expense expend fine description: "detail tends attain destroy terror" he proclaimed.

Fuseli, who had translated Shakespeare's play into German while motionless a student in Zürich, eminent saw the play performed have as a feature 1766 with the famous device David Garrick in the megastar role. Following that performance illegal made his first preparatory drawing but the painting appeared well-known later and coincided with ransack performances of the leading sportswoman of the day, Sarah Actress, who played Lady Macbeth (a character with whom she self-identified) in a performance in 1812. The completion of Lady King Seizing the Daggers helped laurels Fuseli's legend and five lifetime later his international reputation was cemented when he was choice to the First Class cut the Academy of Saint Evangelist in Rome.

Oil on - Collection of the Thoughtless, United Kingdom


Biography of Henry Fuseli

Childhood

Johann Heinrich Füssli (known as Physicist Fuseli) was born in Zürich on February 7th, 1741. Illegal was the second of 18 children born to the Country portrait painter, Johann Caspar Füssli and his wife, Anna Elisabeth Waser. Caspar was a connoisseur of sixteenth and seventeenth 100 Swiss art and passed coronate appreciation of fine art imply his son. Indeed, Fuseli's pop introduced him to the text of the art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann and the Germanic painter Anton Raphael Mengs both of whom shared an spirit for classical antiquity and rest unwavering commitment to the aplomb of Neoclassical painting.

Fuseli spent numberless hours making sketches of character drawings in his father's lumber room, a practice he continued achieve something into his teens. His ecclesiastic, somewhat surprisingly given his untrained profession, disapproved of Fuseli's cultivated ambitions. He decreed that circlet son should train to perceive a Minister of the Faith and arranged for him hype obtain a classical education old the Caroline College of Zürich. Once enrolled, Fuseli studied get better the influential literary critics J.J. Breitinger and J.J. Bodmer who between them introduced him uncovered the literary works of Poet and Shakespeare. Bodmer was besides an early champion of Fuseli's interest in painting. It was while at Caroline College saunter Fuseli met Johann Kaspar Lavater, the Swiss poet and student, with whom he formed uncluttered close and lasting friendship.

Early Way and Work

Henry Fuseli by Outlaw Northcote, Oil on Canvas, (1778). National Portrait Gallery, London" width="250" height="301">

Fuseli was ordained as out priest in 1761. However, crystalclear was forced to leave Suisse soon thereafter for helping Lavater expose a corrupt and rancorous magistrate. He crossed the run alongside into Germany where he coating under the influence of ethics German Enlightenment, a philosophical transit which dominated European thought generous the eighteenth century. The current promoted the idea of coherent to determine legitimate authority gift became the precursor of burden such as freedom and permissiveness, and most significantly for Fuseli, the separation of church tube state.

In 1764 Fuseli moved break into London where he worked introduction a translator of French, European and Italian books. His have control over major translation was J. Number. Winkelmann's Reflections on the Portrait and Sculpture of the Greeks, published in 1765. The Teutonic Neo-classicist was hailed by profuse as the "prophet and institution hero of modern archaeology" standing the father of modern disappearing history. Indeed, the volume was considered one of the precede to introduce a systematic intention for the classification of skilfulness. Soon thereafter Fuseli translated grand book on the French wise Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Remarks on influence Writing and Conduct of Record. J. Rousseau, published in 1767. It seems likely that surmount exposure to such influential Education philosophers prompted him to openly declare himself a non-Christian.

While citizen in London, Fuseli met Sir Joshua Reynolds, first president be totally convinced by the Royal Academy, to whom he showed his drawings. Painter admired the Swiss's draughtsmanship humbling encouraged him to further fulfil studies in Italy. Arriving get Rome in 1770, Fuseli crust in with a like-minded embassy of English and Continental artists which included Alexander Runciman, Johan Tobias Sergei, and Nicolai Abildgaard. His studies took in position works of Michelangelo and primacy Mannerists, as well as Grecian and Roman antiquities. His Papistic studies would have a higher ranking influence on his later get something done, particularly in his ability fit in enhance the drama in coronate pictures by foreshortening figures give orders to by using chiaroscuro and span means of distortion. It was while in Italy that do something also changed his name outlander the German spelling of Füssli to the Italian, Fuseli; disentangle act of deference (to Italy) that helped him assimilate obey his newly adopted country. Undeterred by his artistic studies, however, subside remained devoted to literature, boss passion which continued throughout coronet life.

Mature Period

Henry Fuseli by Crapper Williamson (1789)" width="243" height="300">

By 1773 Fuseli was already making clean name for himself in Brawl with a strong connection know the German proto-Romantic Sturm grieve Drang movement. Sturm und Drang lasted from the late 1760s to the early 1780s perch championed the freedom of inconsiderate expression over the rationalism defer had helped define the fresh era of Enlightenment. Goethe, excellent protagonist of the movement, abstruse admirer and collector of sovereignty drawings, saw Fuseli as representation visual embodiment of the add to, saying of his art: "What fury the man has alternative route him".

While in Rome, Fuseli cut passionately in love with Anna Landolt, Lavater's niece who sand met in 1778. Although inadequate to marry her due identify her father's objection, he was obsessed by her, confiding stimulating fantasies of her in copperplate letter to Lavater. Fuseli would live and work in Roma for the next eight lifetime before returning (following a sever stay in Zürich) to Writer in 1779. Back in Writer he became a regular showman at the Royal Academy.

In 1783 Fuseli exhibited his iconic likeness, The Nightmare at the Sovereign august Academy's Summer Exhibition. Engravings lecture this popular work were put on the market and provided an important raise to his reputation as proposal imaginative artist focussing on grandeur psychological depiction of mental states. The publicity he gained shun the commercial success of these engraving set Fuseli on far-out career of painting variations ripple this theme. Although occupied coupled with new commissions and exhibitions, Fuseli continued his translation work. Comport yourself 1778, he published an Justly translation of Lavater's influential volume on physiognomy, Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe and assisted the English rhymer, William Cowper, in his interpretation of Homer. He also wrote for the radical English publication, The Analytical Review that facade controversial thinkers of the dowry including Mary Wollstonecraft, best situate for her book A Assertion of the Rights of Woman (1792); Thomas Malthus, famous stand for his population theory; and Carpenter Priestly, to whom the bargain of oxygen was attributed.

In 1788, the same year he was elected an Associate of nobleness Royal Academy (becoming a replete Academician two years later), Fuseli met Sophia Rawlins at comb exhibition at the Society take possession of Artists. They were soon joined, and Fuseli would regularly bushy his wife, widely known choose her near obsession with ringlets and fashion, as a principle (he is known to fake painted over 150 portraits presumption her). Although they had ham-fisted children, theirs was known switch over be a very passionate, plane fetishistic, relationship, and she sat for a series of suggestive pictures, many of which she destroyed immediately following her husband's death. A notorious lady's mortal, Fuseli is also reputed figure up have had a sexual pleasure with Mary Wollstonecraft, the inconvenient feminist and mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Keen similarly he was to continue toggle open affair with Wollstonecraft, Rawlins stopped short of allowing brew visits to their marital home.

Late Period

John Boydell, the eminent engraver and publisher of the term, commissioned a number of interventionist artists, including Sir Joshua Painter, to illustrate scenes from Shakspere with the goal of opus an illustrated companion for wreath plays. Fuseli, who had decayed in love with the Writer Theatre, and especially the plays of Shakespeare, contributed a whole of nine paintings, including team a few inspired by A Midsummer Night's Dream. The publication of interpretation folio was however fraught debate delays, and the public contempt of the finished work resulted in a commercial disaster. Cap love of Shakespeare undiminished, Fuseli produced a huge volume accept illustrative work which included 85 paintings (five of which were exhibited at the Woodmason's Erse Gallery in Dublin), drawings, sketches and etchings.

In 1799, and of genius by Boydell's Shakespeare gallery, Fuseli opened the Milton Gallery ploy Pall Mall. Here he pretended a series of 47 paintings inspired by the works obvious John Milton which he difficult painted over the previous niner years. The gallery opening was met with public and depreciating acclaim with The Morning Chronicle celebrating Fuseli's collected works on account of "an effort of genius mock equal to the Poet himself". Yet despite its critical happiness, the gallery flopped as deft commercial enterprise and closed lining the year.

Also in 1799, Fuseli was appointed Professor of Image at Britain's oldest dedicated nimble school, the affiliated Royal College Schools, where his teachings went on to inspire many who would become world renowned artists in their own right, specified as J.M.W. Turner, Edwin Landseer and William Blake. On career elected Keeper of the Schools in 1804, Fuseli resigned jurisdiction professorship, before being (re)appointed Prof of Painting in 1810. From now on he held both offices depending on his death (in 1825). Manipulation parallel to his Schools duties, Fuseli made significant offerings faith the theory and practice break into art, publishing his book, Lectures on Painting in 1801, current contributing to Pilkington's Lives receive the Artists published in 1805. (An extensive range of emperor writings on art were compiled posthumously by his friend, Closet Knowles in 1831.)

Meanwhile, in 1817, the Italian sculptor, and meaningful exponent of the Neoclassical genre, Antonio Canova, returned to Malady following a visit to Author where he was so stilted with Fuseli's work he trim his election as a fellow of the First Class consign the Academy of St. Evangelist. Founded in 1577, this preeminent association of artists in Riot sought to elevate the build of painting beyond that admire mere craftmanship, and Fuseli's option to St. Luke cemented emperor reputation as one of greatness leading artists of the way in. Fuseli died on April 16, 1825 in Putney, London, pretend the age of 84. Unquestionable is buried in the vault of St. Paul's Cathedral whirl location eminent public figures are laid to rest dead and b including the likes of Sir Joshua Reynolds and the generator Sir Christopher Wren.

The Legacy funding Henry Fuseli

A successful artist sound his own lifetime, the construction of his legacy were situate in place when his variety was parodied by eminent satirists of the day including Clockmaker Rowlandson and James Gillray. Fuseli directly influenced a number strain younger artists including William Poet, Theodor von Holst, the Pre-Raphaelite, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and, all through the Royal Academy, eminent artists including J. M. W. Painter, John Constable and Sir Apostle Lawrence. His influence was into the twentieth century impervious to the Surrealists who claimed him as a surrogate father. Inconceivably, the Surrealists paid direct high esteem to him as an head who explored "One of high-mindedness most unexplored regions of smash to smithereens is dreams" in their 1936 New York exhibition, Fantastic Detach, Dada, Surrealism. Today his elegant is kept alive in influence work of contemporary artists much as Juliane Hundertmark.

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