Melanie McDonagh Melanie McDonagh

Mesmerising and eye-opening: Courtauld Gallery’s Fuseli and the Modern Woman reviewed

Plus: the abstract works of Helen Saunders have real power

‘Three women at a curtained window’, c.1778-79, by Henry Fuseli. Credit: Auckland, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki 
issue 03 December 2022

It’s not until you see this exhibition of drawings by Henry Fuseli that you realise that most artists have really not done anything like justice to women’s hair. Fuseli was obsessed with it, particularly that of his wife Sophia, a former artists’ model 20-plus years his junior. Hers was wildly extravagant even by the standards of the time – late 18th, early 19th century.

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