The Nightmare

Henry Fuseli painted The Nightmare in 1781, the most celebrated and disturbing image of Romantic psychology and the work that made his reputation at the Royal Academy. A young woman lies unconscious, draped across a bed in a pose of sensual abandonment, while a demonic incubus squats on her chest and a horse's head — mane flowing, eyes blank and terrible — emerges from the curtain behind. The painting simultaneously invoked the medical understanding of nightmare as caused by a supernatural creature (the 'mare' of nightmare) and the emerging interest in the unconscious mind as a source of images that violated the rational order of waking life. Fuseli's dream was immediately recognized as a defining image of Romantic psychology.

Fuseli's dramatic contrasts of light and dark, with the luminous white of the sleeping figure against the shadowy demon and horse, create maximum visual impact. The distorted proportions and eerie atmosphere demonstrate his unique blend of Neoclassical form and proto-Surrealist imagination.