London, 1789. The Swiss-born painter Henry Fuseli is at the height of his fame, newly married, and on the verge of being elected to the Royal Academy. But as the "Wild Swiss" works on his pictures of dark, dreamlike eroticism, he is drawn into a network of radical thinkers who are eagerly following the revolutions in America and France - among them the pioneering feminist Mary Wollstonecraft. As Fuseli struggles to find his way in a London seething with fog, streetwalkers, dismal poverty and staggering displays of wealth, the stage is set for a showdown between Enlightenment reason and the relentless pull of human desire.