Fuseli Show at Musee Jacquemart-Andre

 Such a great place in general (more to see in the next post) but the Fuseli show was amazing. Spelled Fussli in Europe, he's the guy that painted "The Nightmare," and that's about all I knew about him.

Turns out, he's fascinating. A Swiss artist who came from an artistic family who became a pastor and, of course, moved to London to become a famous painter. As I was looking at his psychologically weird canvases, I thought, "He's a lot like William Blake." Turns out, they were friends. So enjoy some sights of this dramatic, emotive painter.


Fuseli had a fetish for women and women's hair. This is Dido dying after being abandoned by Aeneas, and this is a spirit cutting off her hair, which contains the last of her soul.



"Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble."





This is a fragment of a painting where this guy is a giant who is intimidated by big, bad Thor, who's beating the hell out of a giant serpent. (There's a lot of narrative in Fuseli! One of his painting cycles was based on a Swiss poem about a count who was ordered by Charlemagne to kill his son, and his relationship with Oberon, king of the fairies, and his love affair with the daughter of a sultan. Like I said, a LOT of narrative.)


Alternate take on The Nightmare.

And here's a picture that Blake drew based on Fuseli's gestalt.



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