Portrait of Henry Fuseli
painting by James Northcote
Portrait of Henry Fuseli is an oil on canvas portrait painting by the British artist James Northcote, from 1778. It depicts the Swiss painter Henry Fuseli.
History
The picture was produced while the two were in Rome, where they first met and rapidly became friends. Northcote was a protégé of Joshua Reynolds while Fuseli became known for his unusual, expressive Gothic-inspired works. Both men became prominent members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Despite their friendship Northcote commented that he felt Fuseli "has a manner with him that never appears to me like that of a gentleman, but more like that of a Swiss valet". Today the painting is in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, in London, having been acquired in 1982.
References
Bibliography
Derbyshire, Valerie. The Picturesque, the Sublime, the Beautiful: Visual Artistry in the Works of Charlotte Smith (1749-1806).
Myrone, Martin.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Portrait of Henry Fuseli” is painting by James Northcote. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Portrait, Henry and Fuseli, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q28048051. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1778, 1982, 1749 and 1806.
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This entry incorporates text from “Portrait of Henry Fuseli” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.