Two hundred years ago, on 16 April 1825, the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli, who had lived and worked in Britain for much of his life, died in Putney Hill, London. (There is a disparity in the date of his death between Wikipedia, which claims it occurred the following day, and the Royal Academy.)

Fuseli became a full academician in the Royal Academy in 1790, and nine years later was appointed its Professor of Painting. He continued to hold office in the Academy until his death.

His liberal fantasy of Titania and Bottom from about 1790 is loosely based on the opening of Act 4 Scene 1 of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Titania’s words:
Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy.

Titania (left of centre) calls on her fairies to attend to Bottom, who wears the ass’s head to the right of her. Peaseblossom scratches Bottom’s head, with Mustardseed on his hand, and Cobweb kills a bee to bring its honey to him. Fuseli has borrowed liberally from other sources: Titania’s pose is from Leonardo da Vinci’s Leda (c 1506), the elves at the right from a Botticelli illustration for Dante’s Paradiso (c 1469), and the girl with butterfly wings on her head in the left foreground is based on some of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ child portraits.

Fuseli’s version of Falstaff in the Laundry Basket from 1792 makes the hiding of Falstaff in Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor appear rushed, as one of the armed men looking for Falstaff is already outside.

Another fine example of Fuseli’s dramatic paintings is The Shepherd’s Dream from 1793, telling a story of fairy elves bewitching a peasant, from John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667). In 1799, Fuseli organised a gallery of paintings of the writings of John Milton, but it proved a commercial failure and closed the following year.

Fuseli continued with Shakespearean scenes in this painting of Titania, Bottom and the Fairies from 1793-94. This shows the queen with her arms around the unfortunate Bottom, while attendant fairies serenade the couple.

His Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis (1794-96) is a vivid depiction of Odysseus passing these twin dangers described in Homer’s Odyssey. He stands on the fo’c’s’le of his ship, holding his shield up in defence as the oarsmen down below him struggle to propel the craft through the Straits of Messina.

Tekemessa and Eurysakes, painted in the period 1800-10, is one of the most obscure classical Greek mythological paintings that I have come across. Tekemessa (or Tecmessa) was a princess, whose father was killed by Telamonian Ajax during the Trojan War, and who was taken captive by Ajax. She was famously beautiful, and had a son by Ajax named Eurysakes (or Eurysaces). Mother and son survived Ajax’s suicide, and later Eurysakes became king of Salamis Island, Ajax’s homeland. Fuseli’s painting shows the mother comforting her son, perhaps after Ajax’s suicide, although its subtitle of Eros reviving Psyche is a different interpretation altogether.

Many of Fuseli’s later paintings were concerned with a world of Satan, devils, and witches, among them his Satan Calling up His Legions from 1802.

In another obscure myth, this time from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Ino was transformed into a sea goddess known as Leucothea, who appeared in the form of a gannet to Odysseus when he was shipwrecked during the Odyssey. Fuseli’s Shipwreck of Odysseus from 1803 is a highly dramatic account.

Fuseli’s Sleep and Death Carrying away Sarpedon of Lycia from 1803 is one of the most faithful accounts of this myth. Thanatos and his twin Hypnos are carrying away this dead hero, a son of Zeus who fought for the Trojans, according to Homer’s Iliad.

In Shakespeare’s Richard III, the king is visited by the ghosts of those he has had murdered: King Henry VI, Prince Edward, Clarence, Elizabeth’s brother and son, the two young princes in the Tower, Lady Anne, Buckingham, and others. They each curse him and wish victory to his rival Richmond. The King wakes with a start in the morning, realising that he is about to die. This engraving after Fuseli’s painting of The Ghosts Vanish from 1805 shows Richard awakening as the ghosts of his nightmare are dispersing.

His dark and heavily stylised painting of Lady Macbeth Receives the Daggers from 1812 shows Shakespeare’s character leaning forward towards her husband, who is holding the two daggers and looking distraught, moments after he has murdered King Duncan.

Fuseli captured the dynamics of Theseus’ fight with the Minotaur in this spirited mixed-media sketch of Ariadne Watching the Struggle of Theseus with the Minotaur from 1815-20. Theseus appears almost skeletal as he tries to bring his dagger down to administer the fatal blow, and Ariadne looks like a wraith or spirit.

Fairy Mab, painted by Henry Fuseli in 1815-20, shows a character referred to by Mercutio in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet Act 1 Scene 4, who is the “fairies’ midwife”, and attributed the portentous dreams that have been troubling Romeo. Here she’s more probably in the guise of her reinvention in Percy Bysshe Shelley’s (1792–1822) first large poetic work, Queen Mab, published in 1813. The name Mab is apparently pronounced as if it were Mave, to rhyme with save.

As a teacher in the Royal Academy Schools, Fuseli taught Wiliam Etty and Edwin Landseer, but his greatest influence was undoubtedly on the younger William Blake. He was also an influence on Caspar David Friedrich and the German Romantic painters.

On 16 (or 17) April 1825, Henry Fuseli died in Putney Hill, London. He was accorded the honour of being buried in the crypt of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, where the Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, and other major figures are interred. He is perhaps the greatest and most prolific narrative painter of the British canon.

References

Wikipedia

Myrone, M (2001) Henry Fuseli, British Artists, Tate Publishing. ISBN 978 1 8543 7357 1.