The following critique from the pen of Allan Cunningham, gives a good
idea of Fuseli's abilities as an artist. "His main wish was to startle
and astonish. It was his ambition to be called Fuseli the daring and the
imaginative, the illustrator of Milton and Shakspeare, the rival of
Michael Angelo. His merits are of no common order. He was no timid or
creeping adventurer in the region of art, but a man peculiarly bold and
daring--who rejoiced only in the vast, the wild, and the wonderful, and
loved to measure himself with any subject, whether in the heaven above,
the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. The domestic and
humble realities of life he considered unworthy of his pencil, and
employed it only on those high or terrible themes where imagination may
put forth all her strength, and fancy scatter all her colors. He
associated only with the demi-gods of verse, and roamed through Homer,
and Dante, and Shakspeare, and Milton, in search of subjects worthy of
his hand; he loved to grapple with whatever he thought too weighty for
others; and assembling round him the dim shapes which imagination
readily called forth, he sat brooding over the chaos, and tried to bring
the whole into order and beauty. His coloring is like his design;
original; it has a kind of supernatural hue, which harmonizes with many
of his subjects--the spirits of the other world and the hags of hell are
steeped in a kind of kindred color, which becomes their natural
characters. His notion of color suited the wildest of his subjects; and
the hue of Satan and the lustre of Hamlet's Ghost are part of the
imagination of those supernatural shapes."
FUSELI'S MILTON GALLERY, THE CHARACTER OF HIS WORKS, AND THE PERMANENCY
OF HIS FAME.
The magnificent plan of the "Milton Gallery" originated with Fuseli, was
countenanced by Johnson the bookseller, and supported by the genius of
Cowper, who undertook to prepare an edition of Milton, with translations
of his Latin and Italian poems. The pictures were to have been engraved,
and introduced as embellishments to the work.--The Gallery was commenced
in 1791, and completed in 1800, containing forty-seven pictures. "Out of
the seventy exhibited paintings," says Cunningham, on which he reposed
his hopes of fame, not one can be called commonplace--they are all
poetical in their nature, and as poetically treated. "Some twenty of
these alarm, startle, and displease; twenty more may come within the
limits of common comprehension; the third twenty are such as few men
could produce, and deserve a place in the noblest collections; while the
remaining ten are equal in conception to anything that genius has
hitherto produced, and second only in their execution to the true and
recognised masterpieces of art. It cannot be denied, however, that a
certain air of extravagance and a desire to stretch and strain, are
visible in most of his works. A common mind, having no sympathy with his
soaring, perceives his defects at once, and ranks him with the wild and
unsober--a poetic mind will not allow the want of serenity and composure
to extinguish the splendor of the conception; but whilst it notes the
blemish, will feel the grandeur of the work. The approbation of high
minds fixes the degree of fame to which genius of all degrees is
entitled, and the name of Fuseli is safe."