Henry Fuseli was a Swiss-born British painter, writer and draughtsman, who represented Romanticism movement. His drawings, principally of literary subjects from Homer, Aeschylus, Vergil, Dante, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible, are notable for their vigorous linear quality, often performed in the style of William Blake, John Flaxman or Michelangelo.
Background
Henry Fuseli was born on February 7, 1741 in Zurich, Switzerland. He was the second of eighteen children of Anna Elisabeth Waser and Johann Caspar Füssli, a painter with strong religious convictions. Johann was a collector of sixteenth and seventeenth century Swiss art and he imparted to his son an appreciation of the Neoclassical ideas of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Anton Raphael Mengs. A young Fuseli took an avid interest in his father's art collection and began making sketches of the drawings, when he was eight.
Education
Henry received a classical education at the Caroline College of Zurich, where he befriended Johann Kaspar Lavater. From 1770 to 1778, Fuseli lived in Rome, studying the works of Michelangelo and classical art, which became his major stylistic influence.
Career
After a year in Germany, where Fuseli met most of the progressive writers of the day, he went to England. The idea was, that he was supposed to act as a link between the English and the Swiss-German avantgarde movements, and his admirers confidently expected him to become the literary genius of the Continental coterie on his return. During that time, Henry earned his living by writing and translating and as a tutor to a young nobleman.
Fuseli stayed in England for six years, by which time he had decided to become a painter. He was inspired by Sir Joshua Reynolds, who told him, that he would become the greatest painter of the age, if he studied in Rome for a few years. After that, he spent eight years in Rome, studying classical artworks.
In 1779, Fuseli returned to London, exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy from 1780. His first outstanding success was "The Nightmare", exhibited in 1782. Reynolds promoted his election as associate royal academician in 1788, but there was a temporary coolness, when Fuseli was elected royal academician in 1790 over the head of Reynolds's nominee. In 1799, Henry became professor of painting at the Royal Academy, a post he held till 1805. His first three lectures on painting were published in 1801. In 1804, he obtained the key position of a keeper, virtually head of the academy schools. In 1810, he was appointed a professor of painting at the academy again.
In parallel with Fuseli's career at the academy, and entirely in harmony with its goal, he threw himself with enthusiasm into every scheme for promoting the revival of history painting. His last lectures, which put him in the forefront of those, who pioneered art history in England by combining the analytical approach of Johann Joachim Winckelmann with an even wider background of ideas, were delivered in 1825.
Dispute between Hotspur, Glendower, Mortimer and Worcester
Milton When a Boy Instructed by His Mother
The Shepherd's Dream
Titania and Bottom
Macbeth, Banquo and the Witches
Teiresias Foretells the Future to Odysseus
The Death of Oedipus
The Vision of Catherine of Aragon
The Apothesis of Penelope Boothby
Mamillius Conjuring up Sprites and Goblins for His Mother, Hermione
Friar Puck
Percival Delivering Belisane from the Enchantment of Urma
The Infant Shakespeare between Tragedy and Comedy
The Italian Count (Ezzelin Bracciaferro, 'Iron Arm', Musing over Meduna, Destroyed by him for Disloyalty, during His Absence in the Holy Land) 1780
The Dream of Queen Katherine
The Shepherd's Dream, from 'Paradise Lost'
A Scene from 'The Wife of Bath's Tale'
The Dream of Queen Katherine
'Henry V', Act II, Scene 2, Henry V Discovering the Conspirators
The Fire King
The Dream of Queen Katherine
The Nightmare
Views
Quotations:
"Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object."
"Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command over the eye."
"Ancient art was the tyrant of Egypt, the mistress of Greece and the servant of Rome."
"The price of excellence is labor, and time that of immortality."