Henry Fuseli, R.A.

Benjamin Sharpe (1813–1883), Hanwell Park, Middlesex;

Peter Reinhart, Winterthur, Switzerland, by 1969.

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Johann-Heinrich Füssli – Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), July – September 1926, no. 26, Zurich, 1934, no. 49;

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Johann-Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825): Zur Zweihunderjahrfeier und Gedächtnisausstellung, 1941, no. 22;

Zurich, Kunsthaus, Johann-Heinrich Füssli (1741–1825), Gemälde und Zeichnungen, May–July 1969, no. 77 (lent by Peter Reinhart);

London, Tate Gallery, Fuseli, February–March 1975, no. 136 (lent by Peter Reinhart).

A. Federmann, Johann Heinrich Füssli: Dichter und Maler 1741–1825, Zürich and Leipzig 1927, reproduced pl. 15;

E. R. Beutler, Johann Heinrich Füssli: Ansprache bei Eröffnung der Füßli-Ausstellung des Frankfurter Goethemuseums am 27. August 1938, Halle an der Saale 1939, p. 20;

E. Jaloux, Johann-Heinrich Füssli, Montreux, 1942, reproduced p. 148;

G. Schiff, Johann Heinrich Füssli, 2 vols, Zurich 1973, vol. I, pp. 325 and 565, no. 1219, vol. II, reproduced p. 378;

G. Schiff and P. Viotto, Tout l’œuvre peint de Füssli, Milan 1977, p. 105, no. 249;

D. H. Weinglas, Prints and Engraved Illustrations by and after Henry Fuseli, Cambridge 1994, p. 291.

ENGRAVED
By J. Heath, in Oberon, A Poem from the German of Wieland by William Sotheby Esq., 2nd ed., London, 1805.

The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's: Henry Fuseli. Scene from Oberon. This painting has a strong fairly old stretcher, which seems to have replaced a narrow original traced by a line of small old lost flakes for instance down the lower left side. The firm lining could date from the middle of the last century or rather earlier. Some restoration appears likely to date from the middle of the last century, including the repair of the little lost flakes mentioned above, with some quite minor retouchings in the two upper corners. However very little intrusive cleaning seems to have happened over the life of the painting, and the richly intact quality of the surface seems almost untouched. One recent small damage has been retouched in the roof of the cave. The weave of the original canvas has a characteristically dramatic texture, with the strong brushwork of the main figure sweeping across supremely intact, while the flickering outlines of the wild man on the left suggest theatrical fantasy, all remarkably finely preserved. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Painted circa 1804–05, this is one of a set of ten pictures by Fuseli that were painted as the basis for illustrations to the second edition of William Sotheby’s English translation of Weiland’s Oberon, published in 1805. Eight of these, including this painting, were owned by Benjamin Sharpe of Hanwell Park, Middlesex. Another painting from this set, which also came from the Sharpe collection, was sold in these rooms, 8 December 2011, lot 291, for £320,000.

First published in 1780, Oberon is the most celebrated work of the great German poet Christoph Martin Weiland (1733–1813) – earning the author the title of ‘The German Ariosto’. An epic saga that tells of the adventures of the knight Hüon of Bordeaux, Duke of Guyenne, condemned by the Emperor Charlemagne to travel to Babylon for slaying his son, the despicable Prince Charlot; his relationship with Oberon, King of the Fairies; and his love for Amanda (Rezia), daughter of the Khalif of Baghdad, the poem is both rich with earlier literary allusion and was a significant influence on later writers. Based upon the French medieval romance Huon de Bordeaux, it also draws inspiration from a range of diverse sources including Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Alexander Pope’s version of Chaucer’s The Merchant's Tale, and the Arabian mythology of A Thousand and One Nights; and was in turn the basis for Carl Maria von Weber’s classic opera of the same name, first performed at Covent Garden in 1826. Written in English with the role of Sir Huon performed by the great eighteenth-century tenor John Braham, Weber’s opera was later translated into German by Theodor Hell; with performances mounted in Leipzig in 1826; Dublin, Edinburgh and Vienna in 1827; Prague in 1828; and Budapest in 1829.

Weiland’s poem was also a major influence upon many other great literary and musical works of the European canon; including Schiller’s Don Carlos; Goethe’s Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy; and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, as well as the work of the Portuguese poet  Francisco Manoel de Nascimento (1734–1819). An adaptation of the poem by Sophie Seyler (1737–1789), entitled Hüon und Armande, was re-adapted by Karl Ludwig Giesecke (1761–1833) to provide a libretto for the great conductor Paul Wranitzky (1756–1808), and it was translated into English by Matthew ‘Monk’ Lewis (1775–1818), William Sotheby (1757–1833), and in America by John Quincy Adams (1767–1848). 

This dramatic picture is one of a set of ten illustrations which Fuseli painted for the second edition of William Sotheby's English translation of the poem, published in 1805. Eight of these were owned by Benjamin Sharpe, a Captain in the Royal Navy and scion of the banking firm Goslings and Sharpe, who bought Hanwell Park in Middlesex in 1848. The episode depicted in the present painting is from part I, verses 18–19 in which Hüon, seeking shelter from a storm, meets a wild man dressed in tatters and cat-skins in a cave. This proves to be Scherasmin, servant to Hüon’s late father, Séguin of Bordeaux, who had died in the Holy Land. Roused by the opportunity to serve his old master’s son, Scherasmin pledges his undying loyalty to Hüon on his journey. Fuseli received 120 guineas from the publishers Cadell and Davies and felt he had made ‘a bargain not very advantageous to myself’, in contrast to the 18 guineas the engravers were paid per plate.

Weiland had lived in Switzerland for a number of years when a young man, and among his friends was Fuseli's father, Johann Caspar Füssli, a prominent portrait painter in Zurich. Only twelve years his junior the young artist must have known the great poet and Fuseli himself had begun his career as a writer, having studied theology and the classics as a young man.