George Richmond  

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-[[Image:The Nightmare by Fuseli.JPG|thumb|right|200px| 
-''[[The Nightmare]]'' ([[1781]]) by [[Fuseli|Henry Fuseli]]]] 
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-:''[[Venus in England]]''+'''George Richmond''' (28 March 1809 – 19 March 1896) was an [[England|English]] [[Painting|painter]].
-'''Henry Fuseli''' (in German ''Johann Heinrich Füssli'') ([[February 7]], [[1741]] - [[April 16]], [[1825]]) was a [[United Kingdom|British]] [[painter]], [[drawing|draughtsman]], and [[art theory|writer on art]], of Swiss origin. He had a [[romantic relationship]] with proto-feminist [[Mary Wollstonecraft]] and is best known for his [[fantastic]], [[macabre]], [[grotesque]] and [[erotic]] paintings such as ''[[The Nightmare]]''.+
-[[Poe]] in ''[[The Fall of the House of Usher]]'' said of him:+His early work was much inspired by [[William Blake]], and, with [[Samuel Palmer]] and [[Edward Calvert (painter)|Edward Calvert]], he was a member of the Blake-influenced group known as "[[Ancients (art group)|The Ancients]]". This influence faded in later life, when he produced relatively conventional [[portrait]]s.
-<blockquote>"For me at least -- in the circumstances then surrounding me -- there arose out of the pure abstractions which the hypochondriac contrived to throw upon his canvas, an intensity of intolerable awe, no shadow of which felt I ever yet in the contemplation of the certainly glowing yet too concrete reveries of '''Fuseli'''." </blockquote>+
-==Biography==+
-He was born in [[Zürich]], [[Switzerland]], the second of eighteen children. His father was [[Johann Caspar Füssli]], a painter of portraits and landscapes, and author of ''Lives of the [[Helvetia|Helvetic]] Painters''. He intended Henry for the church, and sent him to the Caroline college of Zurich, where he received an excellent classical education. One of his schoolmates there was [[Johann Kaspar Lavater]], with whom he became close friends.+
-After taking orders in [[1761]] Fuseli was forced to leave the country as a result of having helped Lavater to expose an unjust magistrate, whose powerful family sought revenge. He first travelled through [[Germany]], and then, in [[1765]], visited England, where he supported himself for some time by [[miscellaneous]] writing. In the course of time, he became acquainted with Sir [[Joshua Reynolds]], to whom he showed his drawings. By Sir Joshua's advice he then devoted himself wholly to art. In [[1770]] he made an [[Grand tour|art-pilgrimage]] to [[Italy]], where he remained till [[1778]], changing his name from Füssli to Fuseli, because it was more Italian-sounding. +George Richmond was the father of the painter [[William Blake Richmond]] as well as the grandfather of the naval historian, Admiral Sir [[Herbert Richmond]].
-Early in [[1779]] he returned to Britain, taking Zürich on his way. He found a commission awaiting him from Alderman Boydell, who was then organizing his famous [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]] gallery. Fuseli painted a number of pieces for Boydell, and published an English edition of Lavater's work on [[physiognomy]]. He likewise gave [[William Cowper]] some valuable assistance in preparing a translation of [[Homer]]. In [[1788]] Fuseli married Sophia Rawlins (originally one of his models), and he soon after became an associate of the [[Royal Academy]]. Two years later he was promoted to [[Academician]]. +==See also==
- +*Portrait of [[Thomas Macaulay]] in article about the same.
-In [[1799]] Fuseli exhibited a series of paintings from subjects furnished by the works of [[John Milton]], with a view to forming a Milton gallery corresponding to Boydell's Shakespeare gallery. There were 47 Milton paintings, many of them very large; they were completed at intervals in the space of nine years. The exhibition, which closed in 1800, proved a commercial failure. In 1799 Fuseli was also appointed professor of painting to the Academy. Four years afterwards he was chosen as keeper, and resigned his professorship; but he resumed it in 1810, and continued to hold both offices until his death. In 1805 he brought out an edition of Pilkington's ''Lives of the Painters'', which did little for his reputation. +*Portrait of [[Charlotte Brontë]] in article about the same.
- +
-[[Antonio Canova]], when on his visit to England, was much taken with Fuseli's works, and on returning to Rome in 1817 caused him to be elected a member of the first class in the Academy of St Luke. Fuseli, after a life of uninterrupted good health, died at Putney Hill, at the advanced age of eighty-four, and was buried in the crypt of [[St Paul's Cathedral]]. He was comparatively rich at his death.+
- +
-==Works==+
-As a painter, Fuseli was daringly inventive, and always aspired to the highest forms of excellence. He favoured the supernatural, and pitched everything on an ideal scale, believing a certain amount of exaggeration necessary in the higher branches of historical painting. In this theory he was confirmed by the study of [[Michelangelo]]'s works and the marble statues of the [[Monte Cavallo]], which, when at [[Rome]], he liked to contemplate in the evening, relieved against a murky sky or illuminated by lightning. The violent and intemperate action which he often displays, in the conventional wisdom, destroys the grand effect of many of his pieces. A striking illustration of this occurs in his famous picture of "Hamlet breaking from his Attendants to follow the Ghost": Hamlet, it has been said, looks as though he would burst his clothes with convulsive cramps in all his muscles.+
- +
-On the other hand, his paintings are never either languid or cold. His figures are full of life and earnestness, and seem to have an object in view which they follow with intensity. Like [[Peter Paul Rubens|Rubens]] he excelled in the art of setting his figures in motion. Though the lofty and terrible was his proper sphere, Fuseli had a fine perception of the ludicrous. The grotesque humour of his fairy scenes, especially those taken from ''[[A Midsummer-Night's Dream]]'', is in its way not less remarkable than the poetic power of his more ambitious works. +
- +
-As a colourist Fuseli has but small claims to distinction. He scorned to set a palette as most artists do; he merely dashed his tints recklessly over it. Not unfrequently he used his paints in the form of a dry powder, which he hastily combined on the end of his brush with oil, or turpentine, or gold size, regardless of the quantity, and depending for accident on the general effect. This recklessness may perhaps be explained by the fact that he did not paint in oil till he was twenty-five years of age. Despite these drawbacks he possessed the elements of a great painter.+
- +
-Fuseli painted more than 200 pictures, but he exhibited only a minority of them. His earliest painting represented "[[Joseph interpreting the Dreams of the Baker and Butler]]"; the first to excite particular attention was "[[The Nightmare]]," exhibited in 1782. He painted two versions, shown in [[the Nightmare]] article. He also painted the hag (see the [[Hag]] article).+
- +
-His sketches or designs numbered about 800; they have admirable qualities of invention and design, and are frequently superior to his paintings. In his drawings, as in his paintings, his method included deliberately exaggerating the due proportions of the parts and throwing his figures into contorted attitudes. One technique involved setting down arbitrary points on a sheet, which then became the extreme points of the various limbs—rather like creating a constellation from the unintentional relations of stars. Notable examples of these drawings were made in concert with [[George Richmond]] when the two artists were together in Rome. +
- +
-He rarely drew the figure from life, basing his art on study of the antique and [[Michelangelo]]. He produced no [[Landscape art|landscapes]]—"Damn Nature! she always puts me out," was his characteristic exclamation—and painted only two portraits. +
- +
-His general powers of mind were large. He was a thorough master of [[French language|French]], [[Italian language|Italian]], [[English language|English]] and [[German language|German]], and could write in all these tongues with equal facility and vigour, though he preferred German as the vehicle of his thoughts. His writings contain passages of the best [[art-criticism]] that English literature can show. The principal work is his series of Lectures in the Royal Academy, twelve in number, commenced in 1801.+
- +
-Many interesting anecdotes of Fuseli, and his relations to contemporary artists, are given in his ''Life'' by [[John Knowles]] (1831). He influenced the art of [[Fortunato Duranti]].+
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George Richmond (28 March 1809 – 19 March 1896) was an English painter.

His early work was much inspired by William Blake, and, with Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, he was a member of the Blake-influenced group known as "The Ancients". This influence faded in later life, when he produced relatively conventional portraits.

George Richmond was the father of the painter William Blake Richmond as well as the grandfather of the naval historian, Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond.

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Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "George Richmond" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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