FUSELI, Henry, a celebrated painter, was born at Zurich, in Switzerland, in the year 1741. He was the second son of Gaspard Fuessli, who had obtained some distinction as a portrait and landscape painter. Henry chose to alter the orthography of the family name, and also to place the date of his birth in the year 1745, instead of 1741. From his earliest years he was inspired with a love of painting, particularly of those works which have a sublime or imaginative character. Michel Angelo was his favourite artist; and he familiarized himself with his style, by making numerous copies of some prints of that great master’s productions. Fuseli made rapid progress in learning, and united the love of literature, particularly of the poetry of Greece and Rome, with his devotion to painting. At the Humanity College of Zurich he became the intimate friend of the celebrated physiognomist Lavater. Here he studied the English language, and conceived such an ardent admiration of Shakspeare, that he translated Macbeth into German. He was induced, however, to leave his native place on account of a circumstance in nowise discreditable to his character. A magistrate in one of the bailiwicks of Zurich having committed some flagrant act of oppression, Lavater and he published a pamphlet exposing the affair, and so effectually did the friends succeed in their attempt, that the unjust ruler was compelled to leave the country. His friends, however, so annoyed Fuseli, that after taking his degree of master of arts, he quitted Zurich, first for Vienna and then for Berlin, whither he was accompanied by Lavater. In the capital of Prussia the two friends prosecuted their studies under the learned Sulzer; and here Fuseli extended his acquaintance with English literature. His genius and talents attracted the attention of Sir Robert Smith, British ambassador at the court of Berlin, and by the advice of that gentleman[7:10:278] he was induced to visit England, where he arrived in the year 1762. He had letters of introduction to several influential individuals, through whose instrumentality he obtained the situation of tutor to the son of a nobleman, whom he accompanied to Paris. His governorship, however, was short, and after returning to England he subsisted for some time by the labours of bis pen. He wrote a number of pieces, but acknowledged none save the translation of Winkelman’s work on painting and sculpture. About this period an angry controversy raged between Voltaire and Rousseau, and Fuseli printed a pamphlet in defence of the latter; but the whole impression caught fire, much to the satisfaction of the author, who afterwards felt ashamed of his production. Having shown some of his sketches to Sir Joshua Reynolds, the highly favourable opinion of that great painter determined the fate of our young artist, and he resolved on devoting himself entirely to the pencil. His first work was Joseph interpreting the Dreams of the Chief Baker and Butler; but nothing is known as to the manner in which it was executed or received, and the picture is now lost. In 1770 he visited Italy in company with Armstrong the poet. From his boyhood an enthusiastic admirer of Michel Angelo, he had an opportunity in Rome of studying that great artist in all his sublimity and grandeur, and for weeks together, as he loved to repeat, he would repose on his back gazing upon the magnificent ceiling of the Sistine chapel, and the lofty grandeur of the Florentine. Nor was the milder radiance which sheds such an inexpressible charm over the works of Raffaelle overlooked by our ardent student. But still, although he acknowledged the genius of that great master, he considered him as inferior to Michel Angelo, upon whom, fulfilling the injunctions of Reynolds, “he eat, he drank, he slept, he waked.” From Rome he transmitted several pictures to England, two of which were taken from Shakspeare; namely, the Death of Beaufort, and a scene from Macbeth. After visiting his father at Zurich, he returned to London in 1779. In 1782 appeared his celebrated work entitled Nightmare, a subject peculiarly adapted to his genius, and which at once stamped him as a great and original genius. The idea of the Shakspeare gallery having been started at the table of Aiderman Boydell, it was eagerly caught up by Fuseli and other painters present. It was soon afterwards realized, and, as might have been expected, our artist grappled with the wildest passages of • the dramatist. For this institution he painted eight of his best pictures, of which the Ghost in Hamlet is considered as the noblest. Other pictures followed, the subjects of which were taken from Dante, Virgil, Sophocles, and other poets: and the fame of Fuseli having spread far and wide, he was in 1790 elected a royal academician. In the course of the next nine years he painted forty-seven pictures from Milton, which were afterwards exhibited as the Milton gallery. They all more or less evince the vigorous imagination of the painter. The Lazar House is most admired by men of vertù; but the rising of Satan at the touch of Ithuriel’s spear is the favourite of the multitude. In 1799 he succeeded Barry in the professorship of painting, and, in 1804, Wilton as keeper of the Royal Academy. In the year following he published an improved edition of Pilkington’s Dictionary of Painters, which, however, added but little to his reputation, although he introduced a great number of new names as candidates for pictorial celebrity. In 1807 the students of the Royal Academy presented him with a silver vase designed by Flaxman; and ten years afterwards he was presented with the diploma of the first class in the Roman Academy of St Luke. From this period until his death Fuseli exhibited twelve pictures at the academy, neither the fervour of his fancy nor his skill of hand having in the least failed. Whilst on a visit to the Countess of Guildford at Putney Hill, he became seriously unwell; and his indisposition increasing, he expired there, on the 16th of April 1825, in the eighty-fourth year of his age.

As a painter, the merits of Fuseli are of a high order in the line to which he applied himself. His mind was daring, and in dealing with themes of terror and imagination he evinced an originality and skill not surpassed amongst English artists, for to England he belongs by adoption. As a professor of painting, his chief aim was to impress his audience with a sense of the nobleness of art, and the high purposes to which alone it ought to be dedicated. His lectures and other literary compositions evince the same characteristic attributes of mind. In many of his criticisms upon painters and painting, particularly his celebrated disquisition upon invention, he displays great originality of mind, with a lofty and impassioned eloquence. His lectures were published in one volume 4to.