Detail View: LUNA: Folger Digital Image Collection: Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head

4536

FPa27, with frame

Fuseli, Henry, 1741-1825.

Henry Fuseli. Macbeth consulting the vision of the armed head. Oil on canvas with original inscribed frame, 1793

Macbeth Consulting the Vision of the Armed Head

from a 4x5 color transparency

1793

FSL collection

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Fuseli, Henry, 1741-1825, artist.

Macbeth consulting the vision of the armed head [graphic]. Henry Fuseli.

1793.

1 painting on canvas : oil ; 167.7 x 134.3 cm.

Paintings. gmgpc

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Characters -- Macbeth.

Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616. Macbeth. Act IV. Scene 1 -- Illustrations.

Shakespeare Gallery (Dublin, Ireland), former owner.

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Condition reviewed the paint surface is dry and brittle, and the figure of Macbeth is abraded. The cauldron ends in claw feet, and the leg at the right, as revealed by the pentimento, was originally shown as almost straight

Conserved 19790000 a large slash has been repaired between Macbeth's legs. It runs horizontally to the right beginning at the witch's big toe. A puncture has been repaired in Macbeth's left calf. There are repairs as well to the center of the painting and to the left of Macbeth's lower back. The old lining was removed and replaced in 1979

Engravings: According to Knowles, William Sharpe was in the process of engraving the painting when Woodmason abandoned his project. Sharp's squared working drawings is in the British Museum Print Room (1853-12-10-482)

Exhibited: Dublin, Irish Shakespeare Gallery, Whistler's Great Room, Exchequer Street, 1793, no. XII; London, New Shakespeare Gallery, Schomberg House, 88 Pall Mall., 1794-95, no. XII; this or another version of this subject, Royal Academy, 1811, no. 12; Mead Art Building, Amherst College, "Shakespeare, Hamlet, and Macbeth" (no catalogue), 1951; Washington, D.C., Federal Reserve Board, "Eighteenth- and Nineteenth Century English Painting," 1976-1977, no. 8; San Francisco, 1979-82, repr. in color p. 170; 'As imagination bodies forth...' [paintings] Oct. 28, 1993-Feb.15, 1994.

Knowles 1831, vol. 1, pp. 189-90; Schiff 1973, vol. 1, pp. 107, 163, 187, 514 (no. 881); Hamlyn 1978, pp. 521, 526, 527, and 529, repr. pl. 33; Altick 1985, pp. 313-14; Schiff and Weinglass (forthcoming)

Maggs Bros., Rare Books, Prints and Autographs, 34-35 Conduit St., New Bond St., London, December 1922, £50.

Title from Pressly.

Versions: Der bewaffnete Kopf erscheint vor Macbeth, oil painting, 1774-79, schiff 1973, no. 363; two drawings for above, Schiff 1973, nos. 457 and 457a; also see lost works, nos. 27 and 83 (no. 27 refers to the drawing, which is presumably preparatory to the Folger painting, that Fuseli exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1793 as "Macbeth, the cauldron sinking, the witches vanishing; a sketch for a large picture" [no. 110]; no. 83 is the work exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1811, which in fact may be the Folger picture)

Provenance: Commissioned by James Woodmason for his Irish Shakespeare Gallery, which opened on 1 May 1793; bought by John Knowles before the artist's death in 1825; Knowles sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, Auctioneers, 8 King St., St. James's Square, London, 22 April 1842, lot 87; presented to Sir Herbert Tree by Weedon Grossmith (information contained in letter of 3 November 1922 from Parsons to Folger; Parsons offered the painting for sale less than two weeks after Maggs); Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree Sale, Phillips, Son & Neale, 13 September 1921, lot 167.

Pressly, W.L. Paintings in the Folger Shakespeare Library, 24 (Plate 6)