24 Facts About Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain.

Henry Fuseli painted works for John Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery, and created his own "Milton Gallery".

Henry Fuseli held the posts of Professor of Painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy.

Henry Fuseli's style had a considerable influence on many younger British artists, including William Blake.

Henry Fuseli's father was Johann Caspar Fussli, a painter of portraits and landscapes, and author of Lives of the Helvetic Painters.

Henry Fuseli intended Henry for the church, and sent him to the Caroline college of Zurich, where he received an excellent classical education.

Henry Fuseli travelled through Germany, and then, in 1765, visited England, where he supported himself for some time by miscellaneous writing.

Henry Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell, and published an English edition of Lavater's work on physiognomy.

Henry Fuseli gave William Cowper some valuable assistance in preparing a translation of Homer.

In 1788 Henry Fuseli married Sophia Rawlins, and he soon after became an associate of the Royal Academy.

In 1799 Henry Fuseli was appointed professor of painting to the Academy.

In 1799 Henry Fuseli exhibited a series of paintings from subjects furnished by the works of John Milton, with a view to forming a Milton gallery comparable to Boydell's Shakespeare gallery.

Henry Fuseli pitched everything on an ideal scale, believing a certain amount of exaggeration necessary in the higher branches of historical painting.

Henry Fuseli's figures are full of life and earnestness, and seem to have an object in view which they follow with intensity.

Henry Fuseli often used his pigments in the form of a dry powder, which he hastily combined on the end of his brush with oil, or turpentine, or gold size, regardless of the quantity, and depending on accident for the general effect.

Henry Fuseli painted more than 200 pictures, but he exhibited only a small number of them.

Henry Fuseli's earliest painting represented Joseph interpreting the Dreams of the Baker and Butler, but the first to excite particular attention was The Nightmare, exhibited in 1782, a painting of which he painted several versions.

Henry Fuseli rarely drew figures from life, basing his art on study of the antique and Michelangelo.

In 1788 Henry Fuseli started to write essays and reviews for the Analytical Review.

Henry Fuseli visited Allerton Hall in Liverpool, the home of William Roscoe.

When Louis XVI was executed in France in 1793, Henry Fuseli condemned the revolution as despotic and anarchic, although he had first welcomed it as a sign of "an age pregnant with the most gigantic efforts of character".

Henry Fuseli was a thorough master of French, Italian, English and German, and could write in all these languages with equal facility and vigour, although he preferred German as the vehicle of his thoughts.

Henry Fuseli's pupils included John Constable, Benjamin Haydon, William Etty, and Edwin Landseer.

Henry Fuseli was comparatively wealthy at the time of his death.