Description Etching and dotted colors from 1820. Füssli's painting, detached from reality and anti-academic, is the source of surrealist inspiration. Etching and colored dotted lines executed by Robert William Siever after Füssli. The plate is titled under the composition in French and English and accompanied by a poem also in both languages: “love awaits the radiant morning to inspire amorous dreams. » Talysen Od.XV, v.10 (D. H. Weinglass, Catalog raisonné of prints, p. 297 - Schiff 1504) The source of these verses could not be identified by Weinglass, author of the Catalog Raisonné des etampes and numerous studies on Füssli; it is undoubtedly a Scandinavian poem. Füssli was born in 1741 in Zurich. Destined for the priesthood by his father, painter and art historian. After years spent traveling, he settled in England where he would spend his entire career. His favorite subject is dreams, inspired by Germanic myths and legends, the writings of Shakespeare (A Midsummer Night's Dream), Milton (The dream of Eve) and Dante, conducive to his “poetic fury”. This “gothic” universe is populated by monsters, gnomes and hybrid animals... Goethe, in 1800, spoke thus of his art: “With Füssli, poetry and painting are always at odds (...) he is esteemed as a poet, and as a painter, he always makes the spectator impatient... mannerism is everywhere..." Unusual, inspired, explorer of the unconscious before Freud, Füssli represents with Caspar David Friedrich and Böcklin, through their anti-academic position, a type of painting detached from reality, with the sources of surrealist inspiration.