About This Artwork

Henry Fuseli
British, 1741–1825

Head of a Damned Soul from Dante's "Inferno," (verso), 1770/78

Oil on canvas
edges irregular, approx. 40.6 x 29.8 cm (16 x 11 3/4 in.)
Heinrich Fuessly / 1741-1825 (verso, lower left)
The Leonora Hall Gurley Memorial Collection, 1992.1531

Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories

Exhibition History

Chicago, Art Institute, New Light on Old Masters: French and British Paintings from 1700 to 1800, November 16, 1996–February 2, 1997, no cat.

Publication History

David H. Weinglass, “’Kann uns zum Vaterland die Fremde werden?’ In der Emigration: Johann Heinrich Füssli,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 23–24, 1991, p. 67.

David H. Weinglass, Prints and Engraved Illustrations by and after Henry Fuseli: A Catalogue Raisonné, Aldershot, England, and Brookfield, Vt., 1994, pp. 41, 95, under nos. 50, 83.

Malcolm Warner in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner, French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, 1996, pp. 226-32, ill.

Frances S. Connelly, “Profound Play: The Image Tradition of the Comic Grotesque” in Comic Grotesque, Wit and Mockery in German Art, 1870–1940, exh. cat. Neue Galerie, New York, 2005, p. 205, fig. 11.

Ownership History

Sold Puttick and Simpson, London, October 23, 1914, no. 236, to William F. E. Gurley (died 1943), Chicago [part of a group of nineteen works by Fuseli acquired by Gurley as nos. 235 and 236 of this sale, described under the heading of “Original Drawings by H. Fuseli” as “Illustrations to Milton’s Poems.”]; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1943 [they were not individually accessioned when they arrived at the Art Institute, but the heads can be identified from Gurley’s index cards preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings]; transferred from the Department of Prints and Drawings to the Department of European Painting, 1990; accessioned, 1992.