Woman stirring a fire,

1790s

The painter, writer, and political activist Henry Fuseli was one of the most original artists of the late eighteenth century. Having received an extensive classical education in his native Zurich, Fuseli traveled throughout Germany before arriving in London in 1765. There, he joined a circle of academic painters that included Sir Joshua Reynolds and George Romney, who were intent on establishing a dramatic style of British history painting based on literary sources. Fuseli’s knowledge of archaic British and Germanic literature coincided with the recent availability of eighteenth-century publications of the collected works of John Milton and William Shakespeare, as well as rediscovered medieval manuscripts, translated and annotated for modern readers and scholars.