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Lot Essay
This is a rare and fascinating case of Fuseli abandoning an idea and superimposing a completely different subject. He seems to have begun work on the recto by drawing one of his series of full-length depictions of a woman in a billowing dress and with a typical highly elaborate coiffure. Similar drawings are dated by Schiff to the 1790s and are identified as of his wife, Sophia Rawlins, whom he married in 1788 (G. Schiff, nos. 1061-71, illustrated II, pp. 313-4, and G. Schiff, exh. cat., Henry Fuseli, London, Tate Gallery, 1975, pp. 15-16). In this instance she is stretching a fine thread in front of her and holding a needle in her right hand. There are no recorded drawings of Sophia threading a needle, but Fuseli did use this motif for his sadistic drawings depicting courtesans castrating young boys (Schiff, no. 1603).
Fuseli subsequently turned the sheet of paper at right angles and drew over the blank area of Mrs. Fuseli's skirt a group of figures mourning over the dead body of a warrior of whom only the legs and the lower edge of an antique or medieval tunic are seen. Then, with the sheet of paper held upright, Fuseli outlined a full-length figure of a woman above Mrs Fuseli's right arm and, with the paper held the other way up, a head of a strongly featured man, perhaps, David Weinglass suggests, representing Fuseli himself or Michelangelo. At some point, with the paper held horizontally, Fuseli drew a profile head in pencil, closely resembling the head of Saint John, drawn for one of the illustrations to Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente in the French edition of 1781 onwards (Schiff, no. 902, illustrated II, p. 112, nos. 1779-9; the head was engraved again by Thomas Holloway for the English edition of Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy in 1792 (Schiff, no. 951, illustrated II, p. 279). This head study probably dates from around this period.
On the reverse, much based on transferral from the recto, we see Fuseli’s characteristic fetishist pre-occupation with fantastically coiffed hair. There are five further head and shoulder views of the back view of Mrs Fuseli with highly artificial coiffures, and also a number of colour tests in different washes and the study of a leg. Fuseli paid particular attention to women's hair styles, partly because his fashion-smitten wife, Sophia, was constantly and with his encouragement, trying out complex, even outrageous arrangements of her hair. In 1975, Schiff published a long essay, 'Fuseli, Lucifer and the Medusa,' devoted to Fuseli's obsession with women's hair (op.cit., 1975, pp. 9-20).
Fuseli subsequently turned the sheet of paper at right angles and drew over the blank area of Mrs. Fuseli's skirt a group of figures mourning over the dead body of a warrior of whom only the legs and the lower edge of an antique or medieval tunic are seen. Then, with the sheet of paper held upright, Fuseli outlined a full-length figure of a woman above Mrs Fuseli's right arm and, with the paper held the other way up, a head of a strongly featured man, perhaps, David Weinglass suggests, representing Fuseli himself or Michelangelo. At some point, with the paper held horizontally, Fuseli drew a profile head in pencil, closely resembling the head of Saint John, drawn for one of the illustrations to Lavater's Physiognomische Fragmente in the French edition of 1781 onwards (Schiff, no. 902, illustrated II, p. 112, nos. 1779-9; the head was engraved again by Thomas Holloway for the English edition of Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy in 1792 (Schiff, no. 951, illustrated II, p. 279). This head study probably dates from around this period.
On the reverse, much based on transferral from the recto, we see Fuseli’s characteristic fetishist pre-occupation with fantastically coiffed hair. There are five further head and shoulder views of the back view of Mrs Fuseli with highly artificial coiffures, and also a number of colour tests in different washes and the study of a leg. Fuseli paid particular attention to women's hair styles, partly because his fashion-smitten wife, Sophia, was constantly and with his encouragement, trying out complex, even outrageous arrangements of her hair. In 1975, Schiff published a long essay, 'Fuseli, Lucifer and the Medusa,' devoted to Fuseli's obsession with women's hair (op.cit., 1975, pp. 9-20).