The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli

Artist: Henry Fuseli
Title: The Nightmare
Date: 1781
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 101.6 cm × 127 cm (40 in × 50 in)

Henry Fuseli was a Swiss painter, draughtsman, and writer on art. He worked and spent most of his life in Britain. Fuseli painted more than 200 pictures, but he only showed  a small number of them. The first piece of art to excite and draw the public's  attention was The Nightmare. The Nightmare is Henry Fuseli's best known work. Poet Erasmus Darwin wrote a poem about The Nightmare which he included  in his long poem The Loves of the Plants (1789), for which Fuseli provided the frontispiece. The portion of the poem was written as such: " So on his Nightmare through the evening fog

Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog;
Seeks some love-wilder'd maid with sleep oppress'd,
Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.

Such as of late amid the murky sky

Was mark'd by Fuseli's poetic eye;
Whose daring tints, with Shakspeare's happiest grace,
Gave to the airy phantom form and place.—
Back o'er her pillow sinks her blushing head,
Her snow-white limbs hang helpless from the bed;
Her interrupted heart-pulse swims in death.

O'er her fair limbs convulsive tremors fleet,
Start in her hands, and struggle in her feet;
In vain to scream with quivering lips she tries,
And strains in palsy'd lids her tremulous eyes;
In vain she wills to run, fly, swim, walk, creep;
The Will presides not in the bower of Sleep.
—On her fair bosom sits the Demon-Ape
Erect, and balances his bloated shape;
Rolls in their marble orbs his Gorgon-eyes,
And drinks with leathern ears her tender cries" (Erasmus Darwin)

 "The canvas portrays the worst dream in art and by far the most famous. The sleeper in her virginal nightgown lies readied on the bed like a sacrificial victim, throat stretched bare as if for the blade. On her stomach squats an excremental troll. His pricked ears cast horn-like shadows on the curtains behind her, which are, in turn, thrust apart by the head of a wild-eyed stallion. Even those blind to the intimations of rape, bestiality, voyeurism and murder can feel the power of Fuseli's metaphor: the nightmare as nocturnal violation." (Laura Cummings). The Nightmare was meant to cause nightmares.  The canvas portray a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare  This gives the viewer fear because it brings into perspective that the spirit world and reality are not too far apart and that it is possible that the evils of the spirit realm can access and torment our souls through Nightmares. This work of art fits into the theme beautifully. Accompanied  with an eerie poem this painting strikes fear into the hearts of those who view this painting. The painting itself  was intended to cause nightmares for those who lay their eyes upon it.