Fuseli, Henry (redirected from Fuseli)

Fuseli, Henry (fy`zĭlē), 1741–1825, Anglo-Swiss painter and draftsman, b. Zürich. He was known also as Johann Heinrich Fuessli or Füssli. He took holy orders but never practiced the priesthood. Fuseli went (c.1763) to England and studied in London, where Joshua Reynolds befriended him. He spent a few years in Italy, where he made the studies for his famous series of nine paintings for Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery. Returning to England, he exhibited a number of works of a grotesque and visionary type, including the celebrated Nightmare (1782). His own Milton Gallery housed a series of his paintings illustrating the poet's works. His drawings, of which he left over 800, further reveal his romantic fascination with the terrifying and weird. Fuseli admired and encouraged William Blake. Some of his lectures to the Royal Academy have been published.

Bibliography

See studies by F. Antal (1956), P. A. Tomory (1972), and G. Schiff (2 vol., 1974).

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Fuseli, Henry

 orig. Johann Heinrich Füssli

(born Feb. 7, 1741, Zürich, Switz.—died April 16, 1825, London, Eng.) Swiss-born British painter and writer on art. The son of a portrait painter, he trained in theology as well as in art and art history. He left his native Zürich for London in 1764. Encouraged by Sir Joshua Reynolds, he went to Italy in 1770 and stayed for eight years; on his return to England, his works exhibited at the Royal Academy, such as his most famous work, The Nightmare (1781), secured his reputation. His subject matter was chiefly literary, and his images portrayed macabre fantasies and the grotesque. He was elected a full academician in 1790 and taught painting at the academy (1799–1805).

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Fuseli, Henry 

(originally named Johann Heinrich Füssli). Born Feb. 6, 1741, in Zürich; died Apr. 16, 1825, at Putney Hill, near London. Swiss artist and writer of the early romantic movement.

Fuseli lived chiefly in England, settling in London in 1765. From 1770 to 1778 he lived in Italy, where he moved principally in the circle of J. J. Winkelmann. In 1790, Fuseli became a member of the Royal Academy of Arts; he was a professor of painting and a curator there from 1799 to 1810 and again from 1810 to 1825. His paintings and virtuoso drawings frequently combined a classical idealization of images with impetuous gloomy fantasy, elements of the grotesque, and, at times, keen observation of life. Fuseli was also a poet, historian, and art theorist.

REFERENCES

Nekrasova, E. A. Romantizm v angliiskom iskusstve. Moscow, 1975. Pages 20–44.
Antal, F. Fuseli Studies. London, 1956.
Schiff, G. Johann Heinrich Füssli: 1741–1825, vols. 1–2. Zörich-Munich [1973],