Henry Fuseli
Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825
Triumph of Death: Three Skeletons Invading a Bacchanal Orchestrated by a Magician or an Evil Demon
INV-1514
Henry Fuseli
Swiss, active in England, 1741-18251770–71
Triumph of Death: Three Skeletons Invading a Bacchanal Orchestrated by a Magician or an Evil Demon
Henry Fuseli Swiss, active in England, 1741-1825 →pen and ink drawingsdrawings (visual works)
Date
1770–71
Medium
Graphite, with brush and gray wash, on cream laid paper (left sheet); graphite, pen and black ink, and brush and reddish-gray wash, on ivory laid paper (right sheet), joined and laid down on ivory Japanese paper, edge mounted on cream card
Dimensions
Both sides: 35.7 × 57.2 cm (14 1/16 × 22 9/16 in.); Secondary support: 42 × 36.9 cm (16 9/16 × 14 9/16 in.)
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Location
Chicago, IL
Credit
Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
Fuseli often dwelled on the macabre and the sensational, as in this drawing, and occasionally allowed his unconscious mind to dictate his subject matter. “For if these images so pursue us when our minds are in a kind of waking dream,” he wrote, “why should we not use this vice of the mind?”
Fuseli’s art played a role in his age’s taste for the Gothic. It was an era that saw the emergence of distinctly modern forms of cultural consumption: romances, sentimental novels and, most important, Gothic novels and plays focusing on themes of terror and the supernatural. As Fuseli’s student Benjamin Haydon wrote, “Amongst all classes [Fuseli] was considered a painter of horrors.”
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