FUSELI, John Henry

The subject is taken from the Niebelung Saga (X, 648-50).

This drawing depicts a courtesan wearing a feathered headdress.

One of the most brilliant artistic figure of the time was the Swiss painter, Fuseli, who lived in England. He mixed Neoclassicist and Romantic elements in an art influenced by antique sculpture and the works of Michelangelo. Fuseli depicted contorted bodies order to generate tension and pathos, to captivate the viewer’s emotions and convey the terrors of the sublime. The Inferno in Dante’s Divine Comedy, which was “rediscovered” in the mid-18th century, was especially suited to his purpose. Dante was seen as the very embodiment of the creative individual. The pen and ink drawing Dante and Virgil on the Ice of Kocythos shows the poet standing amongst the heads of those who have been frozen into the sea of ice which fills the crater of hell.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 16 minutes):

Franz Liszt: Dante-sonata

In the Romantic period we encounter the man meditating on destiny in many works, right through to Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. Whenever the artist needed to express horror, incredulity, helplessness in the face of fate, we find the seated figure with his hollow gaze. In keeping with his style and temperament Fuseli intensified this expression in Ezzelin and Meduna, and even more in Silence (c. 1799-1801, Kunsthaus, Zurich).

Fuseli was the second son of the Zurich portraitist and author Johann Caspar Fussli. His early contact with the teachings of Johann Jakob Bodmer familiarized him with the figures of world literature, which were to remain a major source of inspiration throughout his career. Ordained in 1761 as a pastor in the Zwinglian Reformed Church, he left Zurich two years later for political reasons, traveling by way of Berlin to London, where he settled. Initially Fuseli made his living by writing, while engaged in illustrating the works of his favourite authors, particularly William Shakespeare.

The painting represents a scene from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. It shows Lady Macbeth as a a sleep-walker in the corridor of a fortress. The terrified eyes of Lady Macbeth, by now lost between reality and nightmare, clutch at the viewer, almost as though trying to capture him and carry him off into her own unknown dimension.

This painting is a scene from the theater, appropriately lit against a black background. It recalls like no other work by a European painter the mysterious and disturbing wall paintings in Goya’s house a few years later.

This painting depicts a scene from Edward Young’s 1721 play The Revenge. The compositional type is reminiscent of one of Fuseli’s most famous paintings, The Nightmare (Detroit Institute of Arts) which places the female protagonist in a highly expressive and open pose as she confronts impending danger.

This portrait is painted on the reverse of the Nightmare.

The portrait is generally believed to be of the woman Fuseli loved, Anna Landolt, who was a niece of the Zurich physiologist Johann Caspar Lavater (1741-1801). Lavater and Fuseli were close friends, but Fuseli’s suit was rejected by Anna’s parents, and it may not be coincidence that the portrait is on the reverse of his painting The Nightmare.

In the Romantic period we encounter the man meditating on destiny in many works, right through to Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker. Whenever the artist needed to express horror, incredulity, helplessness in the face of fate, we find the seated figure with his hollow gaze. In keeping with his style and temperament Fuseli intensified this expression in Ezzelin and Meduna, and even more in Silence (c. 1799-1801, Kunsthaus, Zurich).

Between 1770 and 1778 Fuseli created a number of erotic drawings which he called “Symplegma.” They are very different from the erotic depictions that were usual in the late Rococo period, and in which the lascivious element is modestly concealed in a pleasurable, anecdotal bedchamber manner, Fuseli is uncompromisingly direct. In these drawings the erotic element often comes close to suffering.

Between 1770 and 1778 Fuseli created a number of erotic drawings which he called “Symplegma.” They are very different from the erotic depictions that were usual in the late Rococo period, and in which the lascivious element is modestly concealed in a pleasurable, anecdotal bedchamber manner, Fuseli is uncompromisingly direct. In these drawings the erotic element often comes close to suffering.

The young Henry Fuseli, in the late 1770s, portrayed himself reduced to despair before the vastness of Rome’s remains. Since he had spent eight years studying in the city, his awe was doubtless exaggerated, but it was also a premonition of the powerful emotions that were to be released in his art.

Fuseli portrayed a young woman on the back of this painting. If it is true that both images are his beloved Anna Landolt, whose parents refused to allow her to marry him, then the Nightmare can be interpreted as an allegory of disappointment. In that case the grisly ape is the man who is ultimately allowed to “possess” the revered lady with his jealous glance. But it is at the price of her life, and Fuseli shows her sunk down and breathing her last.

Being in the grips of a nightmare is a common occurrence that we can all relate to, but we may never experience one exactly as a particular artist depicts it. Here Fuseli conjures up a terrifying image filled with mystery and panic, yet with a vague and disturbing familiarity. It suggests the way the woman feels in the grip of a demonic nightmare, not what she sees. The Nightmare was reproduced as an engraving; a copy hung in Sigmund Freud’s apartment in Vienna in the 1920s.

Fuseli did a total of four variations on The Nightmare, probably his best-known theme. The example in Frankfurt is the second variation. Though the motif was not inspired by any specific literary model, it would be unthinkable without a knowledge of ghost stories, especially English ones. The figure of the woman lying asleep or unconscious is extremely elongated and distorted, not because Fuseli could do no better, but in order to visualize the horrible oppressiveness of the gnome crouched on the woman’s breast, a nightmare and incarnation of unconscious terrors. In the gap between the curtains in the background appears the ghostly head of a blind horse, which anticipates the demoniac aspect given this animal especially in later French Romanticism.

Fuseli did a total of four variations on The Nightmare, probably his best-known theme. The example in Frankfurt is the second variation. Though the motif was not inspired by any specific literary model, it would be unthinkable without a knowledge of ghost stories, especially English ones. The figure of the woman lying asleep or unconscious is extremely elongated and distorted, not because Fuseli could do no better, but in order to visualize the horrible oppressiveness of the gnome crouched on the woman’s breast, a nightmare and incarnation of unconscious terrors. In the gap between the curtains in the background appears the ghostly head of a blind horse, which anticipates the demoniac aspect given this animal especially in later French Romanticism.

Dream and vision, sleep and death were frequently combined as subject by Romantic painters, like in this painting.

Fuseli’s Oath of the R�thli shows that he could turn to nonclassical subject matter, but still retain a sense of dramatic classical form. This work is in many ways a prototype for the heroic pictures of the French.