Nature is a collective idea, and, though its essence exist in each individual of the species, can never in its perfection inhabit a single object.

Not infrequently he used his paints in the form of a dry powder which he hastily combined on the end of his brush with oil or turpentine or gold size regardless of the quantity and depending on accident for the general effect. In 1805 he brought out an edition of Pilkington's Lives of the Painters which did little for his reputation. His father was Johann Caspar Füssli a painter of portraits and landscapes and author of Lives of the Helvetic Painters.