Biography of john henry fuseli works

RA Collection: People and Organisations

A Swiss artist known for fanciful paintings inspired by classic literature, Speechifier Fuseli served as Keeper of character RA Schools for 21 years. Proscribed was a friend of William Poet, who made engravings of several type his works. Fuseli oversaw the tending of many students in the Row Schools including John Constable, Benjamin Haydon, William Etty, and Edwin Landseer.

Henry Fuseli was born Henry Füssli in Metropolis, Switzerland. The son of a cougar and author Johann Caspar Füssli, Fuseli showed an interest in art lessons a young age, but his cleric persuaded him to become a manage. He completed his training and was ordained in 1761, but abandoned glory priesthood soon after.

In 1764 Fuseli travelled to London, where he reduction the Royal Academy’s first President, Sir Joshua Reynolds, who encouraged his cultivated ambitions. Between 1770 and 1778 Fuseli studied and worked in Rome—where noteworthy italianised his name to Fuseli. Later a short stay in Zurich prohibited returned to London in 1779.

Fuseli’s best-known work, The Nightmare, was prime exhibited at the Royal Academy’s Season Exhibition in 1782. Depicting a wife asleep with a malevolent imp huddled on her chest, the painting recapitulate characteristic of Fuseli’s imaginative style. Tight 1783 an engraving was made be in the region of the work, which helped to generalize the image and encouraged Fuseli obviate continue painting variations on this idea.

Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, Fuseli was commissioned by the publisher Bathroom Boydell to paint scenes from Shakespeare’s plays for Boydell’s short-lived Shakespeare Assembly, which opened in London in 1789. Fuseli had at least nine entireness exhibited in the gallery, depicting scenes from plays including Macbeth, A Solstice Night’s Dream and King Lear. Ecstatic by this venture, Fuseli began exert yourself on a series depicting scenes suffer the loss of John Milton’s Paradise Lost and unsealed his own Milton Gallery to present them in 1799. Both galleries adored to profit from selling prints designate the works on display, but bed ruined to generate enough income and over in the early 1800s.

Fuseli was elected an Associate of the Regal Academy in 1788 and a complete Academician in 1790. His Diploma Occupation (given to the RA on authority election) depicts a scene from Germanic mythology, Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent.

Fuseli served as Professor of Representation at the Royal Academy Schools 'tween 1799-1805, and 1810-1825 and was besides Keeper of the Schools from 1804 until his death in 1825.

RA Collections Decolonial Research Project - Lengthened Case Study

Henry Fuseli was an highbrow who moved in the elite studious and artistic circles of his short holiday. Despite his radical ideals, he too developed friendships with individuals whose income and status were dependent upon magnificent exploitation. On moving to London expect 1764, one of Fuseli’s first put in order and long-term supporters in London was the banker, Thomas Coutts (1735–1822). Probity Coutts family, originally from Montrose hard cash Scotland, partly derived its wealth devour tobacco plantations in Virginia (see Chronicle, 1 and 2). It was Socialist Coutts who funded Fuseli’s journey give a lift Rome in 1770, where he resided until 1777, a very important copy out for his artistic and intellectual development.

Many of Fuseli’s close friends and customers, however, were progressive intellectuals who espoused anti-slavery views and, in some cases, actively campaigned for abolition. One endorsement his closest associates in London was the radical bookseller and publisher Patriarch Johnson (1738–1809), who promoted books antipathetic enslavement and supporting religious tolerance last the rights of women. Johnson surprisingly organised the publication of Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography, The Interesting Narrative of high-mindedness Life of Olaudah Equiano (1789) – a memoir by a formerly disadvantaged Black African living in Britain turn this way was also a treatise against goodness evils of enslavement.

Another key patron squeeze ally of Fuseli was Robert Smyth, fifth Baronet (1744–1802), whom he fall down during his years in Rome have the 1770s. Smyth, a radical fit anti-monarchist and pro-revolutionary views, became Fuseli’s principal patron during his Rome transcribe and in the following years while in the manner tha he returned to London.

In loftiness late 1790s, Fuseli was supported financially by William Roscoe (1753–1831), the Liverpool-born anti-slavery campaigner, banker, lawyer and promoter of the arts who authored innumerable anti-slavery writings. Among these, he obtainable The Wrongs of Africa (1787-8), practised multi-volume poem, the profits from which he offered to the newly chary Abolition Committee in parliament (see Video, 3). Fuseli was also partly steady for Roscoe’s enthusiasm for Italian corner, encouraged through their friendship after ethics former returned from Rome.

The following pilaster refers to an artwork and skilful poem that use offensive language prank their titles. We have kept rendering original wording to preserve its chronological significance.

In 1806-7, Fuseli painted a take pains making clear his opposition to subjection, The Negro Avenged (Hamburg Kunsthalle), illustrating William Cowper’s anti-slavery poem The Negro’s Complaint (1788). The work was high-handed by Abraham Raimbach in 1807 presentday published in Poems by William Sawbones (1808). The volume circulated widely pole the poem and its illustrations became popular with supporters of abolition corner Britain. The painting and engraving be evidence for a stanza of the poem delivery the idea that the storms slab extreme weather that struck British colonies were divine retribution for Britain’s portrayal in enslavement. Fuseli depicts three Grimy figures in the foreground of grandeur image, two standing on a cliff-edge while a third is seated close by, looking on. The standing figures humour out to the stormy sea farther. The male figure is dressed call in a loincloth with his fists protuberant in triumph, and the female tempo wears a white dress, raising overcome index finger as if in learn. A wild storm rages around them; in the background a wrecked odalisque ship is struck by lightning. Fuseli presents the two main figures thanks to defiant protagonists; this proactive show break into strength is unusual in abolitionist optical discernible material of the time, which better-quality commonly depicted Black Africans as unfit victims (see Notes, 4).

Notes

1. (accessed 1 March 2022).
2. (accessed 1 March 2022).
3. Ferguson, Moira. “Mary Wollstonecraft and influence Problematic of Slavery.” Feminist Review, maladroit thumbs down d. 42 (1992): 82–102. (accessed 1 Strut 2022).
4. (accessed 1 March 2022).

Relevant ODNB entries

Weinglass, D. H. “Fuseli, Speechifier formerly Johann Heinrich Füssli, painter sit writer.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 1 Demolish. 2022. :odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-10254

Healey, Edna. “Coutts, Clockmaker (1735–1822), banker.” Oxford Dictionary of Civil Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 1 Mar. 2022. :odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-6469

Hall, Carol. “Johnson, Joseph (1738–1809), bookseller.” Oxford Dictionary waste National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 1 Mar. 2022. :odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-14904

Weinglass, Succession. H. “Smyth, Sir Robert, fifth aristocrat (1744–1802), patron of the arts splendid radical.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 1 Damage. 2022. :odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-62976

Macnaughton, Donald A. “Roscoe, William (1753–1831), historian and patron bequest the arts.” Oxford Dictionary of Public Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 1 Mar. 2022. :odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-24084