Friar Puck

Friar Puck at Tabley House combines Shakespearean fairy lore with Fuseli’s visionary imagination. Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, the trickster spirit from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, was a subject that allowed Fuseli to explore the boundary between the comic and the sinister that characterizes much of Shakespeare’s supernatural writing. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays Michelangelesque muscular figures in extremis, supernatural and nightmare subjects, violent foreshortening, dark Gothic atmosphere, theatrical excess.

Fuseli renders the mischievous spirit with characteristic psychological intensity. Bold lighting and exaggerated proportions create a figure that is both comic and slightly menacing.