Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli RA (1741-1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain.

Many of his successful works depict supernatural experiences, such as The Nightmare. He produced painted works for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery and 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.

Fuseli was born on 7 February 1741, in Zürich, the second of 18 children. Among his brothers and sisters were Johann Kaspar and Anna. His father was Johann Caspar Füssli, 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 Zürich, where he received a classical education. 

After taking orders in 1761, Fuseli was forced to leave the country after having helped his friend 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 Füssli to the more Italian-sounding Fuseli. 

In early 1779, he returned to Britain, visiting Zürich on the way. In London, he found a commission awaiting him from Alderman John Boydell, who was then setting up his Shakespeare Gallery. Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell, and supervised the first 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. The early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, whose portrait he had painted, planned a trip with him to Paris, and pursued him determinedly, but communication between the two was stopped by Rawlins. Fuseli later said "I hate clever women. They are only troublesome". In 1790, he became a full academician, presenting Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent as his diploma work. 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. He was succeeded as keeper 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 Matthew Pilkington's Lives of the Painters, which did little for his reputation.

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, which, when at Rome, he liked to contemplate in the evening, relieved against a murky sky or illuminated by lightning.

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, but the first to excite particular attention was The Nightmare, exhibited in 1782, a painting of which he painted several versions. Themes seen in The Nightmare such as horror, dark magic and sexuality, were echoed in his 1796 painting, Night-Hag visiting the Lapland Witches.

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 written work was his series of twelve lectures delivered to the Royal Academy, begun in 1801.

His pupils included David Wilkie, Benjamin Haydon, William Etty, and Edwin Landseer. William Blake, who was 16 years his junior, recognised a debt to him, and for a time many English artists copied his mannerisms.

After a life of uninterrupted good health, he died on 17 April 1825, at the house of the Countess of Guildford on Putney Hill aged 84, and was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral. He was comparatively wealthy at the time of his death.