Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli , 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).

Fuseli, Henry (1741–1825), Swiss artist who came to England in 1764; after studying in Rome (1770–8) he settled in London. His fascination with the sublime and the supernatural expressed itself in many paintings taken from Shakespeare, Milton, Dante, Macpherson's Ossian, and others. He was a learned artist who shone in the literary society of London, and his essays and lectures illumine the intellectual life of his times. He was a friend and admirer of Blake. Blake engraved some of Fuseli's designs and Fuseli wrote the preface to Blake's edition of Blair's The Grave.