The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches

Fuseli's Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches from 1796 depicts a demonic female figure descending on a coven of witches in the northern night — a subject drawn from the tradition of northern European witchcraft belief filtered through literary and poetic sources that had fascinated Fuseli throughout his career. The Night Hag was a figure from Milton's Paradise Lost (Book II) — one of the allegorical monsters at the gates of Hell — combined with the Lapland witches associated in popular and literary imagination with the cold extreme of northern Europe where supernatural forces were believed particularly active. Fuseli renders the subject with his characteristic violent energy and his distinctive treatment of demonic female figures as simultaneously repulsive and commanding.

Fuseli's technique creates a nightmarish atmosphere through extreme chiaroscuro and distorted, fantastical forms. The figures are rendered with dramatic, exaggerated anatomy and expressive gesture, while the dark, atmospheric palette creates a convincing sense of supernatural darkness. The bold, energetic brushwork enhances the painting's unsettling intensity.