The Nightmare
Henry Fuseli · 1781
The story
The Nightmare is a 1781 oil painting by the Swiss artist Henry Fuseli. It shows a woman with her arms thrown below her, in deep sleep as she undergoes a nightmare as an almost hidden horse looks on as a demonic and ape-like incubus crouches on her chest. Its erotic and haunting evocation of obsession became a breakthrough success for Fuseli. Critics were taken aback by its overt sexuality, since interpreted as anticipating psychoanalytic ideas about the unconscious.
- Artist
- Henry Fuseli
- Date
- 1781
- Collection
- Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, United States
- Movement
- Romanticism
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Size
- 101 × 127 cm
Story adapted from the Wikipedia article and its contributors, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Facts from Wikidata (CC0). Image: Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.
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