Engraving and etching after Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli). Sheet size: 46 x 64.5 cm. Printed letterpres announcement: 43 x 46 cm. Nagler X, 55 (Christian von Mechel); Wüthrich 299; Schiff 288; Weinglass 289.

Excellent impression with margins, very well preserved.

This print shows the young Fuseli sketching his friends Johann Caspar Lavater and Felix Hess while taking tea in a garden house with the family of the theologian Johann Joachim Spalding in Barth, Pomerania. Fuseli then went on to paint three grisaille paintings used to decorate the walls of Spalding's garden house. In 1763 Lavater, Fuseli and Hess were briefly exiled from Switzerland for producing a pamphlet Der ungerechte Landvogt that had denounced a magistrate. They went to Germany and spent the summer as guests of Spalding. The publisher and art dealer Christian von Mechel discovered the grisaille and commissioned Henne to make an engraving of it. The grisailles are now lost, but apparently Henne's drawing for the print survives in the Kunsthaus, Zurich. According to Weinglass the lettering on the plate was by Karl Friedrich von Kloden (1786-1856). The print is extremely rare and especially with von Mechel's letterpress announcement.