The life and writings of Henry Fuseli Volume I Part 26

"Adieu, "Henry Fuseli."

CHAPTER XV.

Character of Fuseli as an Artist.--His early style.--His ardent pursuit of excellence in design.--His neglect of mechanical means, particularly as regards Colours.--His professional independence, unmixed with obstinacy.--His preeminent faculty of invention, and success in the portraiture of the ideal.--His deficiencies as to correctness, and disinclination to laborious finish.--Causes of his limited popularity as a Painter.--His felicity in Likenesses.--His colour and chiar' oscuro.--His qualities as a Teacher of the Fine Arts.--His ardent love of Art.--Arrangements as to the disposal of his Works, &c.--List of his Subjects exhibited at the Royal Academy, from 1774 to 1825.

It now remains to speak of Fuseli as an artist, and on this subject it is not necessary to be very diffuse, having been favoured with the able article, to be found in the Appendix, from the pen of William Young Ottley, Esq., a gentleman who was for many years the intimate friend of Fuseli, whose talents as an _amateur_ artist, whose knowledge, taste, and judgment in the Fine Arts are so eminently conspicuous, and whose claims to distinction are so well known to the public by his various works.

It has been shewn throughout this memoir, that the Fine Arts was the ruling pa.s.sion of Fuseli, but that his father took more than ordinary pains to prevent his becoming an artist, and even checked his wishes to practise in the Fine Arts as an amus.e.m.e.nt; hence, the benefits which are considered to arise from that early education which artists usually receive, were altogether withheld from him. His style of drawing in early life was formed from those prints, which he could only consult by stealth, in his father's collection, and these were chiefly from the German school. From this circ.u.mstance, his early works have figures short in stature, with muscular, but clumsy limbs. But in the invention of the subject, even in his youth, he took the most striking moment, and impressed it with novelty and grandeur; hence some of his early productions tell the stories which they are intended to represent, with a wonderful felicity, and, in this respect, are little inferior to his later works; a circ.u.mstance which he himself was not backward to acknowledge. Fuseli always aimed to arrive at the highest point of excellence, particularly in design, and constantly avowed it. When young, he wrote in the Alb.u.m of a friend, "I do not wish to build a cottage, but to erect a pyramid;" and to this precept he adhered during life, scorning to be less than the greatest. Until he was twenty-five years of age, he had never used oil colours; and he was so inattentive to these materials, that during life he took no pains in their choice or manipulation. To set a palette, as artists usually do, was with him out of the question; he used many of his colours in a dry, powdered state, and rubbed them up with his pencil only, sometimes in oil alone, which he used largely, at others, with an addition of a little spirit of turpentine, and not unfrequently in gold size; regardless of the quant.i.ty of either, or their general smoothness when laid on, and depending, as it would appear to a spectator, more on accident for the effect which they were intended to produce, than on any nice distinction of tints in the admixture or application of the materials. It appears doubtful whether this deficiency in his early education, and his neglect also of mechanical means, will be detrimental to his fame as an artist, particularly in the minds of those who can penetrate beyond the surface; for if he had been subjected to the trammels of a school, his genius would have been fettered; and it is then probable that we should have lost those daring inventions, that boldness and grandeur of drawing, (incorrect, certainly, sometimes in anatomical precision,) so fitting to his subjects, and that mystic _chiar' oscuro_, which create our wonder and raise him to the first rank as an artist. He was always proud of having it believed that, in the Fine Arts in particular, in some of the languages, and in many branches of literature, he had arrived at celebrity and eminence, more by his own una.s.sisted endeavours than from the instructions of others. And, in reference to this, he on one occasion exclaimed, in the words of Glendower, with a considerable degree of self-complacency--

"Where is he living, clipped in with the sea That chides the banks of England, Scotland, Wales, Which calls me pupil!"[68]

After quitting his paternal roof, the first work of art which, as I have before stated, appeared to impress his mind with the grandeur of its proportions, was Reichel's colossal figure of St. Michael, over the gateway of the a.r.s.enal at Augsburg; and he afterwards, from having seen this, altered in some degree the proportions of his figures. But still, most of the faults of the German school, in this particular, remained, until after he had visited Italy. The works of the ancients in sculpture, the frescoes of Michael Angelo and Raphael, and the oil paintings of the great masters of the Italian school which he studied there, particularly the two first, produced a still greater change in the proportions of his figures, and he founded his future works upon them: if, however, any figure or group of figures may be quoted to have had a greater influence in this, or to have impressed his mind with more than ordinary notions of grandeur, the two colossal marble statues[69]

by Phidias and Praxiteles upon Monte Cavallo, may be instanced; these chiefly regulated his proportions and influenced his style, although it must be acknowledged that, in the length of limbs, he frequently exceeded them. I have heard him dilate upon the sensations which were produced upon his mind when he has sometimes contemplated these grand works of art, on an evening, when the sky was murky for some distance above the horizon, and they were illuminated by occasional flashes of vivid lightning.

Fuseli paid much attention, and gave due consideration to the suggestions of others, respecting his own performances, particularly with regard to the proportions of his figures, and indeed courted the observations not only of the learned, but of those also who are unskilled in the art, and usually profited by their remarks. When Mr.

Ottley, then a very young man, and always an admirer of the Fine Arts, was introduced to him by Mr. Seward, in the year 1789, he was painting the picture of "Wolfram introducing Bertram of Navarre to the place where he had confined his wife with the skeleton of her Lover,"[70]

which was exhibited the following year, this gentleman observed, "I like your composition much, but I think the proportions of the figures in the back-ground, those, I mean, of the Baron and his friend, too long in the lower limbs." Fuseli paused for a time, and then answered, "You are right," and immediately reduced them in height.

In invention, which is not within the rules of art, and therefore may be considered the highest quality of a poet or a painter; no man has gone beyond him, and perhaps he possessed this quality in a higher degree than any other artist, since the restoration of the Fine Arts in Europe. The _portfolios_ of drawings which he left, fully establish his claim, in this respect, to his being considered a genius of the first cla.s.s, and as such place him in the highest rank of artists, Michael Angelo and Raphael not excepted. These drawings were made with wonderful felicity and facility; and a spectator would be astonished to see with what ease and power he invented and executed them. In telling the story of the subject, he was never deficient; and the designs made by him would be enough to occupy the lives of many painters to put them upon canva.s.s; for there was no very striking incident in the poets in particular, or in the historians, from Hesiod down to our own times, which, at some period of his long life, had not been the subject of his pencil. On his drawings, he usually put the time when, and place where made; but I know of no instance of his having placed either his name or a monogram upon a picture.

No artist had a more vivid fancy than Fuseli, or was more happy in pourtraying superhuman and ideal beings: thus, the visions of Dante and Spenser, and the poetic flights of Shakspeare and Milton, were stamped even with originality by his pencil; and those scenes which, from their difficulty to be represented on paper or on canva.s.s, would deter most artists from attempting them, were his favourite subjects; and in his delineation of them, he may generally be placed on a par with, and he occasionally soars above, the poet. Perhaps to no man can the following lines be more aptly applied than to Fuseli:--

"The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the painter's brush Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation, and a name."

It is, therefore, in these visionary scenes in which he shone most, and which defy compet.i.tion; for "the daring pencil of Fuseli transports us beyond the boundaries of nature, and ravishes us with the charm of the most interesting novelty."[71] In works of this nature, an occasional extravagance of drawing rather tends to encrease than to diminish their interest; so he was thus enabled to introduce therein those heroic and epic forms so peculiar to himself, which do not so well accord with subjects of sober history. Fuseli frequently invented the subjects of his pictures without the aid of the poet or historian, as in his composition of "Ezzelin," "Belisaire," and some others; these he denominated "philosophical ideas made intuitive, or sentiment personified." On one occasion he was much amused by the following enquiry of Lord Byron:--"I have been looking in vain, Mr. Fuseli, for some months, in the poets and historians of Italy, for the subject of your picture of Ezzelin; pray, where is it to be found?" "Only in my brain, my Lord," was the answer; "for I invented it."

In composition, which has been not inaptly termed "the painter's invention," he was very happy; for in his productions there are never "figures to let;" but there is a general link, and one and all tend to tell the story, and influence the spectator. The disposition and folding of the drapery were always appropriate and good. He had a high feeling of grandeur in his male, and of beauty in his female forms: although, in the former, strength of muscular action is often exaggerated, and in the latter there is occasionally a degree of apparent voluptuousness; yet he gave to both great truth of physiognomic expression, being always intent upon the intellectual part of his art. He was well acquainted with osteology, or the form and position of the bones in the human body; in these he seldom erred, although, perhaps, they were often too strongly marked. He was also skilled in the theory of the anatomy of the muscles; but as he never painted from, and seldom consulted, living models after he quitted Italy, except when he occasionally acted as "visitor in the Life Academy;" so, when he put a figure on paper or on canva.s.s into a position which he had never seen it a.s.sume, either in a statue or in nature, he was occasionally incorrect in its muscular action. The models in the "Life Academy" did not tend to correct him in this, he being more intent upon the progress of the pupils than his own information: they were therefore usually placed by him in att.i.tudes to correspond with the antique figures. As no individual form has been found, in all its parts, to approach, in point of symmetry, to the celebrated works of the ancient sculptors, so, when Fuseli has been solicited to paint frequently from life, he has said, "Nature puts me out;" meaning to convey this notion, that he searched in vain in the individual for that beauty or grandeur which he had mentally contemplated. Although he was happy in delineating playful scenes, yet those which create terror or sympathy in the mind, were his general and favourite subjects, and these he treated with great power; yet, in carrying the terrible to its utmost limits, I know of no subject from his pencil calculated to create horror or disgust. He invented and composed his pictures with great rapidity, and if he thought of a subject, and had not a canva.s.s of a convenient size, it was frequently his practice to rub in the new idea upon a finished picture; hence some of his ablest productions are lost. As his mind was ever intent upon something new, it cost him an effort to finish a picture; which disposition, it appears, he inherited; for, in speaking of an ancestor, Matthias Fuessli, who died at Zurich in the year 1665, he thus expresses himself:--"His extensive talent was checked by the freaks of an ungovernable fancy, which seldom suffered him to finish his work. His subjects, in general, were battles, towns pillaged, conflagrations, storms."[72]

In painting his pictures, Fuseli used indiscriminately the right hand or the left; but as the latter was more steady, if he were executing subjects on a small scale, which required more than ordinary neatness of touch, they were usually performed with the left. And although some of his small pictures were highly finished, and touched with great neatness, yet he excelled in those where the figures were of or above the size of nature.

The subjects of his pencil were never very popular; because they were generally drawn from poetic imagery, or from cla.s.sical authors, which require a poetic eye and mind in the spectator, or a deep knowledge in the cla.s.sics, to appreciate properly. He gloried in never having made his pencil a pander to the public taste, and that he had lived by painting what pleased himself, and was content to trust to time for a correct appreciation of his merits. "For when," as he said, "envy shall no longer hold the balance, the next century will become just, and the master impede no more the fame of his works." In going home with him one evening, in a coach, to Somerset House, after having left Mr. Johnson's house, Bonnycastle being present, Fuseli put to him the following question:--"Pray, Bonnycastle, what do you consider the reason that I am not popular as a painter, in a country which has produced Shakspeare and Milton?" Bonnycastle answered, "Because the public like familiar subjects, in which there may be individual beauty with fine colouring."

"Is that their taste?" said Fuseli hastily: "then, if I am not their painter, they are not my critics."

He had a happy method of giving likenesses, from memory, of those persons whose physiognomic cast of countenance took his fancy; but the only portraits which he painted regularly from life, were those of Dr.

Priestley, and Mrs. Neunham, a niece of Mr. Johnson's. The portrait of Dr. Priestley is very characteristic; and Fuseli always felt convinced that he should have succeeded as a portrait painter, beyond the expectations of his contemporaries, if he had turned his attention to that branch of the art.

It has been considered by some, who mistake style for manner, that Fuseli was in all respects a mannerist. That his pictures always have a marked and distinguishing character is true; but if he had a manner, it was peculiarly his own, and it belongs to no other artist. It must however, in justice, be confessed, that a sort of family-likeness runs through many of his figures. But if the pictures which composed his greatest work, the Milton Gallery, be critically compared, one with the other, it will be found that, in the invention of them in particular, few painters have made greater deviations than he has done; no two being composed or painted upon precisely the same principles.

As a colourist, Fuseli has never ranked high; for in his works there is generally nothing of that splendour which captivates us in the Venetian and Dutch schools, as they usually have the sobriety of tone which is more peculiar to fresco than to oil-painting; he was not unaware of this, and expresses himself thus, in one of his lectures on colour:--"Of this it is not for me to speak, who have courted, and still continue to court--colour, as a lover courts a disdainful mistress." But if, by the term colouring, be meant an adaptation of hues and general tone to the nature of the subject represented, then he may be considered, in the strictest sense of the word, a colourist. Yet, if we take a wider range, we shall find many examples in his pictures which must be acknowledged by every one to possess fine colour: thus, the back figure of a female (Sin) in "The bridging of Chaos," the child in "The Lapland Witches,"

and the figure of Sin in the picture of "Sin pursued by Death," may be adduced as unanswerable proofs of this fact.

When the excellence of particular pigments to produce fine colouring has been the topic of conversation, he has said, "The colours, as now prepared in England, are sufficently good; it only requires the mind and eye to adapt, and the hand to regulate them."

In _chiar'oscuro_, or the art of giving a single figure, or a composition of figures, their true light and shadow, Fuseli was a perfect master, and deserves unmixed praise for the breadth of his ma.s.ses, and for directing the eye of the spectator to the princ.i.p.al figures or features in his pictures. In this, perhaps, no master in the British school has gone beyond him; for in his productions we witness that union of subject and tone, brought about by a skilful adaptation and disposition of light and shadow, which we look for in vain in the works of many other painters.

As a teacher of the Fine Arts, whether Fuseli be considered in his capacity of Professor of Painting, or in that of Master in the schools of the Royal Academy, his knowledge stands unrivalled; in the first, for critical ac.u.men; and in the second, which now more properly comes under consideration, for the soundness of his judgment, for the accuracy of his eye, and for the extensive knowledge which he possessed of the works of the ancient and modern masters. To the students he was a sure guide and able master, ever ready to a.s.sist by his instructions modest merit, and to repress a.s.sumption; and if he felt convinced that a youth was not likely to arrive at eminence as an artist, he was the first to persuade him to relinquish that pursuit, rather than proceed in the path which would only end in ruin or disappointment. He always held the opinion, however liable to objection, that there is no such thing in the universe of mind as

----"a flower born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air;"

for every man, he considered, would shew what is in him, and do all that his nature has qualified him to do. To those who presumed upon a talent which they did not possess, no man was more severe. It was no uncommon thing with him, if he found in the Antique Academy a young man careless about the accuracy of his lines, and intent only upon giving a finished appearance to his drawing, to cut in, with his sharp thumb nail, a correct outline, and thus spoil, in the opinion of the student, his elaborate work. That the English school of design gained great advantages by his appointment of Keeper of the Academy, cannot be doubted; and, to be convinced of this, it is only necessary to refer to the able works of living artists, Hilton, Etty, Wilkie, Leslie, Mulready, Haydon, Briggs, and others, who were his pupils.

Notwithstanding the variety of his acquisitions, and his profound knowledge in, and love for, literature, his "ruling pa.s.sion" was the Fine Arts; but he never intruded them as the subject of conversation, unless pressed to do so. He evinced this "ruling pa.s.sion strong in death;" for, just before his last illness, he had sent two pictures for the then ensuing exhibition of the Royal Academy; the larger one, "A Scene from Comus," finished; the smaller, "Psyche pa.s.sing the Fates," in an unfinished state, intending, as is the common practice with the Academicians, to glaze and harmonize this picture in the situation where it was to be placed. Its unfinished condition frequently occupied his thoughts during his illness, and he, but two days before his death, spoke of it with great solicitude to Sir Thomas Lawrence, wishing it either to be withdrawn, or that some painter of talents would harmonize it for him. The last work on which his pencil was employed, and on which he painted a few days previously to his death, was a scene from Shakspeare's King John: in this picture, the figure of Lady Constance in particular, is finely designed, and grief is admirably depicted in her countenance; he was painting this for James Carrick Moore, Esq., and it was nearly completed when he died.

The works of art, and the library, which Fuseli left, were disposed of as follows:--His drawings and sketches were purchased at a liberal price, by Sir Thomas Lawrence.[73] The Marquis of Bute, the Countess of Guilford, and other friends, bought pictures and books, at prices named by myself, to a considerable amount, and the remaining pictures, and the sketches in oil, were sold by Mr. Christie, and the prints and books by Mr. Sotheby. A large collection of beautiful drawings, of entomological subjects, chiefly by Mr. Abbot, of Georgia, in North America, a small part of which cost him two hundred guineas, were the only articles reserved, as no sum was offered which was considered as at all adequate to the value of these, which had been Fuseli's favourite study and amus.e.m.e.nt.

The following is a list of the pictures and drawings exhibited by Fuseli at the Royal Academy, from 1774 to the year 1825 inclusive, making a total of sixty-nine pictures.

1774--The Death of Cardinal Beaufort (a drawing).

1777--A scene in Macbeth.

1780--Ezzelin Bracciaferro musing over Meduna, slain by him for disloyalty during his absence in the Holy Land.--Satan starting from the touch of Ithuriel's lance.--Jason appearing before Pelias, to whom the sight of a man with a single sandal had been predicted fatal.

1781--Dido, "Illa graves oculos, &c." (aeneid 4.)--Queen Katherine's Vision. (Vide Shakspeare's Henry VIII. Act 5.)--A Conversation.

1782--The Nightmare.

1783--The Weird Sisters--Perceval delivering Balisane from the enchantment of Urma. (Vide Tale of Thyot.)--Lady Constance, Arthur, and Salisbury. (Vide Shakspeare's King John.)

1784--Lady Macbeth walking in her sleep.--dipus with his Daughters, receiving the Summons of his Death. (Sophocles.)

1785--The Mandrake; a charm. (Vide Ben Jonson's Witches.)--Prospero. (Vide Tempest.)

1786--Francesca and Paolo. (Vide Dante's Inferno.)--The Shepherd's Dream. (Vide Paradise Lost, Book I. line 781.)--dipus devoting his Son. (Vide dipus Coloneus of Sophocles.)

1788--Theseus receiving the clue from Ariadne (a finished Sketch.)

1789--Beatrice. (Vide Much Ado about Nothing.)

1790--Wolfram introducing Bertram of Navarre to the place where he had confined his Wife, with the Skeleton of her Lover. (Vide Contes de la Reine de Navarre.)

1792--Falstaff in the Buck-basket. (Vide Merry Wives of Windsor.)--Christ disappearing at Emaus.

1793--Macbeth; the Cauldron sinking, the Witches vanishing.

(Sketch for a large picture.)--Amoret delivered from the enchantment of Busirane, by Britomart. (Vide Spenser.)

1798--Richard the Third in his Tent, the Night preceding the Battle of Bosworth, approached and addressed by the Ghosts of several whom, at different periods of his Protectorship and Usurpation, he had destroyed.

1799--The Cave of Spleen. (Vide Rape of the Lock.)

1800--The Bard. (Vide Gray.)--The Descent of Odin (ditto).--The Fatal Sisters (ditto).

1801--Celadon and Amelia. (Vide Thomson's Seasons.)

1803--Thetis and Aurora, the Mothers of Achilles and Memnon the Ethiopian, presenting themselves before the throne of Jupiter, each to beg the life of her Son, who were proceeding to single combat. Jupiter decided in favour of Achilles, and Memnon fell.