Born on this day 280 years ago was the Anglicised Swiss painter Henry Fuseli. He was very eminent and successful in his day (Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy, etc.), but his work has not aged well – all those strenuous contorted poses, that overwrought melodrama, that straining for the sublime and terrible, even the creepily perverse eroticism [see above, An Incubus Leaving Two Sleeping Women] look more ridiculous than impressive to modern eyes, though The Nightmare remains a popular image. The baleful influence of Michelangelo is all too apparent in his works (as in Blake's), and it is no surprise to learn that he rarely drew from life, preferring antique sculptures – and, of course, Michelangelo. 'Damn Nature!' he exclaimed. 'She always puts me out.' Hence no landscapes.
My own favourite picture of his is this, The Artist Moved to Despair at the Grandeur of Antique Fragments...
I've always found 'The Nightmare' quite funny. I can't help but imagine the rather scandalised-looking horse making some sort of saucy horse noise at the scene it has suddenly intruded upon.
ReplyDeleteYes, a lot of unconscious comedy in Fuseli (and in Blake, come to that). The Nightmare is often used in newspaper cartoons, memes, etc, isn't it?
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rowlandson_Covent_Garden_Night_Mare.jpg
ReplyDeleteRowlandson's parody of 'The Nightmare' featuring Charles James Fox is still very funny! Cruikshank also parodied it.
There seems to be a conspiracy of silence among Blake scholars about the fact a lot of his poetry and art is inadvertently funny - '"Dark Virgin", said the hairy Youth...' etc
Yes, and quite a lot of it is downright bad, especially the art. There are real flashes of genius in his poetry though, I think...
ReplyDeleteI find Fuseli rather fascinating. I'm not sure if it's for artistic merit or, rather, because he represents so well aspects of his very distinctive 'Romantic' age. I feel the same way about David. You can sense what was going on at the time through such artists - the rise of rationalism and the reaction against it etc
ReplyDeleteYes, they certainly have their place in Art History. I often think that those artists who stand outside their time and can't be so easily classified get a bit of a raw deal.
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