Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer known for some of the most iconic depictions of Gothic horror in art history. Fuseli’s distinctive style blends elements of Romanticism and the sublime with a fascination for the supernatural and the bizarre, explored through the artist’s innovative use of light and shadow as well as his dynamic compositions.

Fuseli was born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zurich in 1741 to a family of bell-founders, artisans and painters. His father, Johann Caspar, was a former itinerant portrait painter, art writer and collector of early Swiss art. From him, Fuseli received rigorous art-historical training, especially on the neoclassical ideas of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Anton Raphael Mengs. Despite his early interest in art, Fuseli was sent to the Caroline College in Zurich to be educated as a clergyman and, in 1761, Fuseli was ordained a Zwinglian minister.

In 1764, Fuseli set out for London as a spokesman for German literature and aesthetics, was introduced to influential individuals such as the banker Thomas Coutts and the bookseller Joseph Johnson — both would become generous long-term patrons of his art. During the next four years, Fuseli supported himself by his pen, supplementing his journalistic work by providing the booksellers with designs for book illustrations. By early 1768, however, he contemplated devoting himself to fine art and sought a meeting with the celebrated British portraitist, Sir Joshua Reynolds. The selection of drawings and etchings Fuseli showed Reynolds greatly impressed the older artist, who became convinced that Fuseli could be a successful ‘colourist as well as a draughtsman’, notwithstanding his lack of formal training as a painter.

Upon Reynold’s encouragement, Fuseli departed for Rome in 1770 to study painting. There, he was taken both by the grandeur and scale of Roman sculptures. He adopted the Italianate form and pronunciation of his name and rejected the archaism of Winckelman and Mengs which had suffused his early artistic output in favour of the dramatically expressive and heroic renderings of the human form he encountered in works by Michelangelo, Parmigianino and Rosso Fiorentino. These artists would inform Fuseli’s bold rhythmic and psychologically penetrating compositions for years to come. He returned to London nine years later an international celebrity.

A taste for fantastic and supernatural themes permeated culture in Britain from around 1770 to 1830 and Fuseli emerged at its centre. As early as the 1780s, the artist began to depict subjects from Shakespeare and Milton, providing him with an opportunity to explore his interest in the mystical, demonic and mythological. He transformed literary texts into imagery, in much the same manner as his contemporary and friend William Blake, who had been profoundly influenced by Fuseli.

Fuseli’s masterpiece The Nightmare (1781, Detroit Institute of Art) is one of the most enduring images in Western art, often associated with themes of unconscious desire and psychological terror. Another iconic picture that encapsulates Fuseli’s ability to translate psychological narratives into haunt visual imagery is his The incubus leaving two young women. In 2021 the painting sold at Christie’s in New York for US$3,510,000, setting a world auction record for the artist.