Bust Portrait of a Woman with Bonnet

Among the most enchanting of Füssli’s ingeniously crafted graphic works are the various depictions of his attractive wife. They also serve as the sole visual record that can provide insights into the true nature of their relationship. In Füssli’s eyes, his wife was the embodiment of erotic power, while art offered him a way of immortalizing her extravagant fashions and sophisticated coiffure – laying bare his own fetishistic predilections in the process. There exists a number of mythological scenes by Füssli featuring men being subjugated by women who bear a striking resemblance to his wife; at other times, she is depicted in his drawings as a prostitute – a revealing dynamic for psychoanalytical interpretations. For some time, art critics routinely described the subjects of these works as ‘courtesans’, until the discovery of an authenticated portrait of Frau Füssli. This in turn revealed that she had appeared in nearly every portrait created by the artist in the period from 1788 until the beginning of the following century.