Margaret Fuller’s Reading Worlds

Author

Sir Charles Bell(1774–1842)

Sir Charles Bell is documented in Fuller’s manuscripts. One work is named, all in On Michelangelo and Raphael, and the most intensive engagement recorded is “excerpted”.

Engagement
ExcerptedAnalyzedReadMentioned
Present in
Manuscripts
Totals count documented engagements, once at the earliest witness. How we count →

Reprints, Memoirs passages, and repeat notes within a single manuscript are shown but never counted twice. Evidence for this author is selective, not exhaustive. Methodology →

In Fuller’s words

“Sir Charles Bell – Anatomy of expression in painting: a good sensible book. Shades of thought well worked. All that he thinks he has, he has. Antique beautified nature rather than reconstructed nature from an Ideal, the law of proportion was evolved from close study of actual forms. … Bell says that in public dancers the arm even if of as fine natural proportions is inferior in elegance and vigor to the leg and thigh from want of as constant exercise.”
Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting · On Michelangelo and Raphael

When Fuller engaged with Sir Charles Bell

No datable encounters with Bell, Sir Charles have been catalogued yet.

This page brings together documented engagements currently identified within the Fuller Reading Worlds catalog.

Bell in Fuller’s reading world

Documentary evidence

Selected passages from Fuller’s own writings, in chronological order.

Undated

Pieces with no legible date. They are part of the record but cannot be placed on the lifeline.

n.d.—

On Michelangelo and Raphael

p30–33
excerpted · analyzed · readManuscript page
“Sir Charles Bell – Anatomy of expression in painting: a good sensible book. Shades of thought well worked. All that he thinks he has, he has.”

Fuller, Margaret. "On Michelangelo and Raphael." Houghton Library, Harvard University.

Fuller explicitly names the book: 'Sir Charles Bell – Anatomy of expression in painting.' She writes summaries and paraphrases of Bell's arguments over several pages (pp. 30–33): on the antique, the elephant's eye, Jupiter modeled on the lion, Hercules on the bull, early Greek sculptors, public dancers' arms vs. legs, and the advantages of sculptural training for painters. The full title is “Essays on the Anatomy of Expression in Painting” (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1806). A second edition appeared in 1824 titled Essays on the Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression.