This picture, based on Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), helped make Fuseli’s name. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1780. Fuseli creates a sense of tremendous physical drama. The exhibition was crowded with pictures by different artists: he wanted this canvas to stand out.
In 1780 the Royal Academy had moved to grand new rooms in Somerset House on the Strand. It was from around this time that art reviews started appearing regularly in newspapers, magazines, and pamphlets. The following excerpts are taken from commentaries on Fuseli’s painting.
This is a most admirable Composition, and shews the artist to be
a Man of real Genius and elevated Ideas: If the Execution of this
Piece were equal to the Conception, it would be a Chief d’Oeuvre.
The Public Advertiser, 2 May 1780
The artist had apparently a strong and lively conception of the
several stories which he has here painted: we wish that we could,
with justice, commend the execution of the designs: but the drawing
in all of them is incorrect, the rules of proportion egregiously
violated, and the colouring intolerably harsh and unpleasing.
– Still, there are discoverable in them traits of genius, and an
inventive imagination, particularly in the figures of Satan and Ithuriel.
The London Courant, 3 May 1780
There is something amiss in the Proportions of Satan’s limbs, so
as to render the Figure awkward, not terrific. The Scene, however,
is well copyed from Milton, and does Credit to the Imagination of the Artist.
The St James’s Chronicle, 9-11 May 1780
