
Sketch for "Oath on the Rütli" (recto), Female Figure (verso)
Henry Fuseli · 1779–81 (recto); 1785–90 (verso)
Provenance
Ownership history
- Possibly William F. E. Gurley (died 1943), Chicago [The picture was discovered, unstretched, among the holdings of the Department of Prints and Drawings in 1976. It is possible that it came to the Art Institute in 1922 or 1943 as part of the Gurley Bequest, a large collection of drawings many of which remained unaccessioned until the 1980s and 1990s]; transferred from the Department of Prints and Drawings to the Department of European Painting and accessioned as an anonymous gift, 1980
Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.
Exhibitions
Exhibition history
- Bernisches Historisches Museum, Zeichen der Freiheit: Das Bild der Republik in der Kunst des 16. bis 20. Jahrhunderts, June 1-September 15, 1991, no. 4.
- Art Institute of Chicago, Shockingly Mad: Henry Fuseli and the Art of Drawing, November 18-April 1, 2017.
Literature
Published references
- Frederick N. Bohrer, "Public Virtue and Private Terror: A Two-Sided Oil Sketch by Henry Fuseli," Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 53 (1990), pp. 89–106 (ills.).
- 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. 220–26 (ill.).
- Fred Licht, Simona Tosini Pizzetti, and David H. Weinglass, Füssli pittore di Shakespeare: Pittura e teatro, exh. cat., Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Parma, 1997, no. 7 (not exhibited).
Comparables
Related holdings by the same hand

Milton Dictating to His Daughter
Art Institute of Chicago

Two Heads of Damned Souls from Dante's "Inferno" (recto and verso)
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Ugolino and His Sons Starving to Death in the Tower
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Dante Swoons before the Soaring Souls of Paolo and Francesca, Virgil at his Side
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Perseus Starting from the Cave of the Gorgons
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Hercules Killing the Mares of Diomedes
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Portrait of a Woman (Martha Hess)
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The Discovery (recto), Two Sketches of Standing Male Figures (verso)
Art Institute of Chicago
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Research assistant