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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Battle of the Standard, after Leonardo da Vinci 1777 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Danaë, after Polidoro da Caravaggio 1775 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Dead Christ, after Enea Vico 1770-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Ignudo from the Sistine Ceiling, after Michelangelo 1777 drawing British Museum |
"Fuseli was born in Zurich on 6 February 1741, the second son of the five children of Johann Caspar Füseli and Elisabeth Waser. Although educated as a theologian and ordained as a Zwinglian minister in 1761, Fuseli pursued a wide range of humanist studies, developing an enthusiasm for classical philology under the influence of Johann Jakob Breitlinger, and becoming proficient in English, French, and Italian. He was introduced by Johann Jakob Bodmer, the mentor whom he most revered, to the Nibelungenlied, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, later the principal sources of his art. His associations with the Sturm and Drang movement were close. Forced, with Lavater, to leave Zurich in 1763 after publishing a pamphlet critical of the administration, he traveled in Germany, England, and France, embarking on a literary career."
"Encouraged by Reynolds in 1768 to become a painter, Fuseli traveled to Italy in 1770 in the company of John Armstrong. He sought inspiration from classical sculpture, Michelangelo, and Mannerist art, and, befriended by the Swedish sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel, became the leading spirit of a group of innovative young artists. Returning to London in 1780, Fuseli established his reputation with The Nightmare. . . ."
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| Henry Fuseli Incubus from Fuseli's painting The Nightmare 2006 Badge sold at the Tate Gallery Gift Shop plastic, paper, metal British Museum |
"Fuseli's relationships with and attitude to women were highly important for his art. His most passionate love was for Anna Landolt, a niece of Lavater, whom he met in Zurich in 1778; but her father refused his suit. He married in 1788 Sophia Rawlins, an attractive young model obsessed with hair and fashion, who was socially and intellectually his inferior; there were no children, but she appears to have satisfied her husband's fetishistic and other desires. Mary Wollstonecraft's passion for him in 1792 was firmly put down by Mrs. Fuseli. Fuseli died suddenly on 16 April 1825, at the home on Putney Hill of Coutt's daughter, Lady Guilford, and was buried in Saint Paul's Cathedral, London."
– John Hayes, from British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries: the Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue, Washington DC, 1992
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Roman Scene 1771 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Pastoral Scene 1777-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Pastoral Scene 1777-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Unidentified Scene ca. 1770-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Unidentified Scene 1778-80 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Torso 1770-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Figure Study 1777-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Figure Study 1776-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Figure Study 1770-78 drawing British Museum |
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| Henry Fuseli Roman Album Profile, possibly Self-portrait ca. 1770-78 drawing British Museum |