Henry Fuseli

Johann Heinrich Füssli was trained for the Zurich church and took holy orders, but helping to expose a corrupt magistrate forced him to leave Switzerland. In London Joshua Reynolds urged him to paint, and eight years in Rome studying Michelangelo gave him his taut, straining figures. He specialised in the supernatural and the extreme, and The Nightmare (1781) made him famous. He became Professor of Painting at the Royal Academy and influenced the young William Blake.