1803
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Evening Thou Bringest All is a 1803 by Henry Fuseli, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman twists in mid-air, her wild hair and billowing dress swirling around her. The background is dark, with a few quick lines suggesting a stormy sky. This isn’t a careful drawing—it’s full of energy, like the artist’s hand moved fast. The Greek text at the bottom is backward, a clue that this is a print, not a direct sketch. Fuseli used lithography, a new way to make prints by drawing on stone. If you like this kind of dramatic, dreamlike energy, look up the technique: impasto.
Here, the free expression of the artist’s drawn lines echoes the frenzied movement of his hand and the excited energy of the woman’s twisting body. While the immediacy of the mark marking suggests direct contact between the paper and the artist’s pen, the reversal of the Greek text at lower left exposes this work as a printed image, breaking the illusion. Created using lithography, a newly invented medium, the artist drew his composition on a specially prepared limestone. The stone was then inked and printed, reversing the image in the process.
The title of this print is drawn from a poem by the classical poet Sappho.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Henry Fuseli was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer on art who spent much of his career in Britain.
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
