The Nightmare

Artwork: The Nightmare

Artist: Henry Fuseli

Created: 1781

Periods: Romanticism, Sturm and Drang

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 101.6 x 127 cm

Location: Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, Michigan, USA

————————————————

“The painting’s dreamlike and haunting erotic evocation of infatuation and obsession was a huge popular success. After its first exhibition, at the 1872 Royal Academy of London, critics and patrons reached with horrified fascination and the work became widely popular, to the extent that is was parodied in political satire and an engraved version was widely distributed. In response, Fuseli produced at least three other versions.

Interpretations vary. The canvas seems to portray simultaneously a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare. The incubus and horse’s head refer to contemporary belief and folklore about nightmares, but have been ascribed more specific meanings by some theorists. Contemporary critics were taken aback by the overt sexuality of the painting, since interpreted by some scholars as anticipating Jungian (relating to or characteristic of the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung or his works)ideas about the unconscious (the part of mind which is inaccessible to the conscious mind but which affects behaviour and and emotions).”

#wikipedia #1transcribedtext #webgalleryofvisualart