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Oil on canvas 141 by 111 cm.; 55 1/2 by 43 3/4 in. This dramatic painting shows the celebrated balcony scene from Act III, Scene 5 of Romeo and Juliet the poignant moment when Romeo bids farewell to Juliet who has a premonition of his death: "O God I have an ill-divining soul; Methinks I see thee, now thou are so low, As one dead in the bottom of the tomb; Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale." Fuseli's interest in Shakespeare dated from his ealiest days in Zurich where he studied with the great scholar Johann Jakob Bodmer who introduced him to the works of Shakespeare and Milton. He worked feverishly on Shakespearian subjects whilst in Rome where he also conceived the idea of a room decorated with frescoed scenes from Shakespearian dramas in imitation of the Sistine Chapel. He was also a chief initiator of Boydell's Shakespeare Gallery to which he made notable contributions, and Shakespeare was the source for his two earliest exhibits at the Royal Academy. However he came relatively late to Romeo and Juliet. In 1809 he exhibited two subjects from that play at the Royal Academy - The Encounter of Romeo and Paris at the monument of the Capulets (Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC) and Romeo contemplating Juliet in the Monument (Private Collection, Basel). This latter work is of the same size and provenance as the Balcony Scene and may even have been conceived as a pendant to it. Professor Weinglass has suggested that the features of Juliet in the Balcony Scene probably represent the celebrated Irish born actress Eliza O'Neill (1791-1872), whom Fuseli much admired and certainly painted. On 6th October 1814 she had made her London debut at Covent Garden as Juliet to the Romeo of William Conway and was an enormous success, being dubbed "a younger and better Mrs Siddons". For the next five years she was reigning favourite in London but on her marriage to the Irish MP William Becher (later created a baronet) she abandoned the stage. In a letter dated 15th December 1815 William Roscoe wrote to Dawson Turner of a Fuseli drawing which he admired - "The idea is that of Juliet looking down from the balcony; and was suggested by seeing Miss O' Neill, whom he greatly admires, and of whom this is intended to be rather a picturesque than an exact representation. "The dramatic effect of showing Juliet high in the foreground with Romeo standing far below clearly caused the artist some difficulties. Margaret Patrickson recalls, in her reminiscences of Fuseli: "Of the pictures which I saw him paint.... The Romeo, in a picture where the spectator was supposed to be in the balcony with [Juliet] caused him great trouble. "D..n that little fellow", he cried, "he will look like Tom Thumb!" The picture formed part of the important group of Fuseli's works collected by Thomas Coutts the banker who was a firm supporter of the artist. It passed to his granddaughter Frances who married Dudley, 2nd Earl of Harrowby and was one of a group of ten exhibited by John, 5th Earl of Harrowby in Zurich in 1926 and dispersed to Swiss collectors shortly afterwards. A study of "the Garden Scene", possibly related to this picture, was in the artist's studio sale in 1827 where it was bought by Sir Thomas Lawrence. We are grateful to Professor David Weinglass for his assistance in cataloguing this painting and for confirming on the basis of photographs and technical reports that it is wholly the work of Fuseli without later additions. PROVENANCE Commissioned by Thomas Coutts (1735-1824), and by descent to his granddaughter Frances who married Dudley, 2nd Earl of Harrowby; Thence by descent to John, 5th Earl of Harrowby (1864-1956), by whom sold in Switzerland in the 1920's: Richard Dreyfuss EXHIBITED Kunsthaus, Zurich, Fussli Ausstellung, 1926, no. 50; Kunsthaus, Zurich, Johann Heinrich Fussli, 1941, no. 67 LITERATURE Arnold Federmann, Johann Heinrich Fussli, 1927, p. 174; Gert Schiff, Johann Heinrich Fussli 1741-1825, 1973, Text Vol. pp. 641-642 (Balkonszene), Plates Vol, p. 592; Gert Schiff, L'Opera Completa di Fussli, 1977, no. 299; Professor D.H. Weinglass, The Collected English Letters of J.H. Fuseli, 1982, p. 531.