Triumph of Death: Three Skeletons Invading a Bacchanal Orchestrated by a Magician or an Evil Demon

Triumph of Death: Three Skeletons Invading a Bacchanal Orchestrated by a Magician or an Evil Demon

Henry Fuseli, 1770–71

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Artist: Henry Fuseli (Swiss, 1741–1825)
Medium: Graphite, with brush and gray wash, on cream laid paper (left sheet); graphite, pen and black ink, and brush and reddish-gray wash, on ivory laid paper (right sheet), joined and laid down on ivory Japanese paper, edge mounted on cream card
Size: Both sides: 35.7 × 57.2 cm (14 1/16 × 22 9/16 in.); Secondary support: 42 × 36.9 cm (16 9/16 × 14 9/16 in.)
Museum: Art Institute of Chicago
Rights: CC0 — no rights reserved

Fuseli often dwelled on the macabre and the sensational, as in this drawing, and occasionally allowed his unconscious mind to dictate his subject matter. “For if these images so pursue us when our minds are in a kind of waking dream,” he wrote, “why should we not use this vice of the mind?” Fuseli’s art played a role in his age’s taste for the Gothic. It was an era that saw the emergence of distinctly modern forms of cultural consumption: romances, sentimental novels and, most important, Gothic novels and plays focusing on themes of terror and the supernatural. As Fuseli’s student Benjamin Haydon wrote, “Amongst all classes [Fuseli] was considered a painter of horrors.”

Text: Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0.

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