The sleepwalking Lady Macbeth

Henry Fuseli painted The Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth around 1781–84, depicting the supernatural guilt scene from Shakespeare's tragedy in which the guilt-ridden queen sleepwalks through the castle, reliving the murder of Duncan in a trance. The subject was ideal for Fuseli's interest in the boundary between waking and sleeping states, consciousness and unconscious compulsion, rational action and psychological possession. His Lady Macbeth combines physical grandeur — the figure is monumental, her bearing almost regal even in her derangement — with psychological dissolution, the eyes blank and the gestures automatous. The work is one of his finest Shakespearean paintings and a major contribution to the Romantic tradition of psychological portraiture.

Fuseli renders Lady Macbeth as a ghostly, spectral figure moving through darkness, her white nightgown creating a stark contrast with the surrounding gloom. The elongated proportions and eerie lighting create an atmosphere of psychological horror.