Henry Fuseli, R.A.

According to Fuseli’s inscription, this bold drawing was created in July 1816 at Somerset House, the then home of the Royal Academy. As ‘Professor of Painting,’ Fuseli was a key figure at the institution and he kept a studio there. The portrait, with its intriguing perspective and typical intensity of line, is a fine example of the drawings Fuseli made of glamorous ladies of his circle in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.

The identity of Fuseli’s subject is not confirmed but it has been suggested that he portrays Lavinia de Irujo, the illegitimate daughter of Don Carlos Martinez de Irujo y Tacón, 1^st Marques de Casa Irujo and first Spanish Ambassador to America. She was born in the Spanish Embassy in London and later lived at 7 Upper Church Street, Chelsea. A number of other drawings of Lavinia de Irujo by Fuseli are known.¹

The present work has an interesting provenance. Unknown to scholars until 1992, it remerged at Christie’s, London as part of an album of over fifty drawings by Fuseli that had been compiled in the 1830s by Harriet Jane Moore. Harriet was the daughter of James Moore (later Carrick-Moore) and the granddaughter of Dr John Moore, who had accompanied the 8^th Duke of Hamilton on his grand tour to Italy and who later acted as family physician to William Lock of Norbury Park. Fuseli was close to the Moore family and he was particularly fond of Harriet, whom he had known since she was a small child. Harriet would later own a number of works by the artist including the large oil painting of Titania and Bottom, now at Tate Britain, as well as an album of drawings, known as the ‘Roman Album’ which is today in the collection of the British Museum.² Rather than receiving this drawing directly from Fuseli himself, an inscription, written by Harriet Moore on the now lost album page, indicated that the first owner may have been Eliza Frances Wainewright, whose husband, Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, was an admirer of Fuseli. Wainewright led an extraordinary life: having fallen into heavy debt, he is thought to have murdered his uncle, his mother-in-law and his half-sister before finally being deported to Australia in 1837.

^1. G. Schiff, Johann Heinrich Füssli 1741-1825, Zurich and Munich, 1973, nos. 1656-64

^2.  London, Tate Britain, inv. no. N01228 and London, British Museum, inv. no. 1885,0314.262