Sketch for "Oath on the Rütli" (recto), Female Figure (verso)
1779–81 (recto); 1785–90 (verso)
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
76 × 67.5 cm (29 15/16 × 26 9/16 in.); Framed: 79.4 × 69.3 cm (31 1/4 × 27 1/4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
59989
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Although Henry Fuseli spent most of his career in England, he was born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zurich, Switzerland. This is a preliminary study for the artist’s first important commission, The Oath on the Rütli, in Zurich’s city hall. Both the study and the final painting depict the oath sworn on the Rütli meadow in 1291 by representatives of three Swiss cantons (territories) against the ambitions of their Habsburg overlords. This sketch, with its limited palette and loose, expressive brushstr...
Art Historical Context
This double-sided oil sketch by Henry Fuseli captures the artist’s deep engagement with dramatic historical narratives and the human form. The recto, painted between 1779 and 1781, is a preparatory study for Fuseli’s larger composition *Oath on the Rütli*, which depicts the legendary founding moment of the Swiss Confederacy. As a Swiss-born artist working in Britain, Fuseli drew on his own cultural heritage to explore themes of unity and resistance, using bold gestures and intense lighting to heighten the emotional weight of the oath-taking scene. The verso, created several years later, presents a female figure study that reveals Fuseli’s ongoing fascination with expressive anatomy and movement. Executed in oil on canvas—a medium more commonly associated with finished works—this sketch demonstrates the artist’s fluid creative process, allowing him to experiment with composition and technique across both sides of the support. Today in the Art Institute of Chicago’s collection, the work offers visitors an intimate glimpse into Fuseli’s method and the Romantic era’s passion for stirring historical subjects.
About the Artist
Henry Fuseli · 1741–1825
Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, was a Swiss-British painter whose visionary works exploring dreams, nightmares, and psychological terror made him one of the most original figures of the Romantic movement. His art bridged Neoclassical discipline with Romantic emotionalism, creating images of supernatural intensity that would influence artists from William Blake to t...