Johann Caspar Füssli

Johann Caspar Füssli; portrait by Anton Graff (1765)

Johann Caspar Füssli (3 January 1706 – 6 May 1782) was a Swiss portrait painter and art historian.

Biography

Füssli was born in Zürich to Hans Rudolf Füssli, who was also a painter, and Elisabeth Schärer. He studied painting in Vienna between 1724 and 1731, and then became a portraitist in the courts of southern Germany. In 1736, he returned to Zürich, where he painted the members of the Government and figures of the Enlightenment era such as Johann Jakob Bodmer and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.

He married Elisabeth Waser, and they had five children: Hans Rudolf, Johann Kaspar (1743–1786), Johann Heinrich ("Henry Fuseli", 1745–1832), Anna (1749–1772), and Elisabeth. Füssli died in Zürich in 1782.

Publications

• Geschichte und Abbildung der besten Mahler in der Schweitz, (1754–1757), (Story And Illustration Of The Best Swiss Painters)
• Geschichte der besten Künstler in der Schweitz (1769–1779), (Story Of The Best Swiss Artists)

External links

• Füssli, Johann Caspar in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
• "Füssli, Johann (Hans) Kaspar (Caspar) (der Ältere)". SIKART Lexicon on art in Switzerland.