College, 20th February: Art History

Today we looked at how to make comparisons between two artists,  The two Jo had selected were Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), born in Germany but latterly living in England,

Image copied from the V and A website here

and Paula Rego who was born in Portugal in 1935 but has lived almost all her life in the UK.

Image from London Evening Standard website here.

Both artists have been described as Gothic, Sublime and Romantic: they have both concentrated on figurative painting, on narrative works, and on dramatic compositions and settings.  Both have used strong contrast between dark and light (chiaroscuro) in their works, and their compositions often have a sense of the mysterious, the slightly un-settling,  the grotesque.  The fact that they are separated by 200 years makes little different to the way in which we should analyse and describe the main themes of their work.  INdeed, making the comparison between them heightens our understanding and awareness of these characteristics.  We can see the strong contrast of light and dark in Fuseli's painting The Weird Sisters or The Three Witches (1783),

Image copied from the Tate website here.

and see a similar device in Rego's The Dance, 1988. 

Image copied from the Tate website here.


Fuseli was almost entirely self-taught, and he did not start painting until his late '30s, but he was quickly accepted into the art establishment and was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy.  He had some fairly torrid love affairs.  He was working at  time of great political turmoil in Britain and Europe, through the American and french revolutions, and the Napoleonic Wars and the upheavals in domestic British politics (the corn laws, etc) which followed.  He was firmly within the Romantic school, but perhaps this rich and dark approach to narrative painting fitted well in that broader social and political context of change and uncertainty.

Rego came to Britain as a child and while at art school she fell in love with a married artist, Victor Willing, and became pregnant at 19.  After a dramatic intervention by her father, she and Willing married and had 3 children.  However, Willing later contracted MS and became immobilised.  Rego had to act as his carer for years.  Many of her paintings depict the conflicting emotions this created, and the tensions within the family that his dependency caused.  Many of her images are quite disturbing, depicting him as helpless, sometimes as a dog, and the children watching from the sidelines.  Rego was also influenced by times of upheaval in politics and society, her childhood in Portugal influenced by living under a dictatorship (Gen Salazar) and then the huge disruption of the Second World War.

The lecture showed how you can take tow artists and make meaningful comparisons between them in terms of style, tone, subject matter and approach.  As ever with JO's classes, it was lively and stimulating.