Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1975.1.12
Gallery Label:
George Harlow, one of Sir Thomas Lawrence's best pupils, was commissioned to paint this portrait of the expatriate Swiss artist Henry Fuseli by Fuseli's biographer John Knowles. It was eventually reproduced in Knowles's Life and Writings of Henry Fuseli (1831). The critic J. T. Smith described the picture as "one of the most dignified and characteristic likenesses of Fuseli, for which that artist threw himself into a position, and gave the Painter every possible advantage, by affording him numerous sittings…[it may be] fairly considered as the chef-d'œuvre of that highly-talented Artist." According to Knowles, Harlow was "ridiculously foppish, and by dressing to the extreme of fashion, was often the laughing-stock of his brother artists." They referred to him as "Clarissa." Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005
