Historyand Hollywood film biographiesare full of painters who scrabbled for a living in obscure garrets, and became famous only when dead. But history and Hollywood pass over the many painters admired by all the world who later disappeared because their art lacked lasting power or because a generation lost interest in it.
Last week U.S. readers could learn of one such artist, famed, then forgotten as a personality, and now rediscovered. The 20th Century had a new name for him: though Henry Fuseli antedated the term he was England's first and best Surrealist. When he died in 1825, Sir Thomas Lawrence mourned...