S.A. Bent, comp. Familiar Short Sayings of Great Men. 1887.
John Henry Fuseli
[An historical painter; born in Zürich about 1742; visited England, 1763; became a painter by advice of Reynolds; professor at the Royal Academy, 1749; published “Lectures on Art” and “Aphorisms;” died 1825.]
His forte was the romantic style, in which he was grand, but often extravagant.
When Northcote asked him how he liked his painting of the angel meeting Balaam and his ass, Fuseli replied, “You are an angel at an ass, but an ass at an angel.”
Fuseli called Titian’s portrait of Paul III. and his two nephews “True History;” and Northcote said that “portrait-painting often runs into history, and history into portrait, without one knowing it;” and again, “The greatest history-painters have always been the ablest portrait-painters.”
