Creator of Nightmares
Henry Fuseli’s Art and Life
Christopher BakerAn engaging study of the provocative and inventive artist Henry Fuseli.
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) was one of the eighteenth century’s most provocative and inventive artists. He is best known for his painting The Nightmare, which created a new form of terrifying gothic imagery for the Romantic age. This engaging study of the artist’s career unveils Fuseli’s complexities, navigating contradictions between literary and painted works, sacred and secular themes, and traditional patronage versus the new era of competitive exhibitions and intense criticism. Plotting Fuseli’s trajectory from Zurich to Paris, Rome and ultimately London, where he secured long-lasting fame, the artist is revealed as an astute publicity seeker and self-proclaimed genius who transformed himself from a priest to an Enlightenment writer, a ‘mad’ mercurial force in the art world, and finally a revered teacher.
An engaging study of the provocative and inventive artist Henry Fuseli.
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) was one of the eighteenth century’s most provocative and inventive artists. He is best known for his painting The Nightmare, which created a new form of terrifying gothic imagery for the Romantic age. This engaging study of the artist’s career unveils Fuseli’s complexities, navigating contradictions between literary and painted works, sacred and secular themes, and traditional patronage versus the new era of competitive exhibitions and intense criticism. Plotting Fuseli’s trajectory from Zurich to Paris, Rome and ultimately London, where he secured long-lasting fame, the artist is revealed as an astute publicity seeker and self-proclaimed genius who transformed himself from a priest to an Enlightenment writer, a ‘mad’ mercurial force in the art world, and finally a revered teacher.
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Creator of Nightmares is lean and engaging, in many ways an ideal introduction to the painter.
'Wall Street Journal
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The Nightmare (1781) is one of the most recognisable paintings in art history, but, Baker notes, its creator is more of a mystery. Here, he makes a case for Fuseli being ‘one of the most provocative, inventive and fascinating artists’ of the late 18th century.
'Apollo
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There is much to commend in this clear and scupulously researched biography: the author's deep familiarity with the whole corpus of Fuseli's works, his informed sense of the milieus in which Fuseli moved in London and in Rome, and his treatment of Fuseli's origins and early ambitions. This biography sends the reader back refreshed to the fascinating contrasts in the arts of the turn of the 19th century, host to both the daylight restraint of neoclassicism and the wild night-time riot of devils, witches, dreams and fire.
'Literary Review
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A highly readable representation, richly illustrated and wonderfully well balanced.
'Werner Busch, Professor of Art History, Freie Universität Berlin
Introduction
1 Origins in Zurich
2 A European Man of Letters
3 The Impact of Rome
4 The Nightmare
5 The Vagaries of Fame
6 Creative Friendships
7 Legacies
References
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Photo Acknowledgements
Index
Christopher Baker is Editor of the Burlington Magazine and an Honorary Professor at the University of Edinburgh. He was previously a Director at the National Galleries of Scotland and has published and lectured widely on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British and European art.