A mare was waiting for the visitors of the Royal Academy Exhibition in London in 1782. Among the long lines of portraits of gentlemen and ladies, as the exhibition catalogue reveals, an unusual painting awaited to scare and amaze. The mare in its title The night-mare, printed on page 6, is not, however, the mare we would expect today, although a horse's head appears in the painting. Instead, it is the mare from Samuel Jonson's dictionary, a creature of nightmares that torments sleepers.
The painting in question is the well-known Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare, perhaps the most famous representation of a tormented sleeper in the history of art. Visitors of the Royal show in the late 18th century were probably caught by surprise, after lines of portraits and paintings with moralizing subjects, with this daring and provocative depiction that positions a twisted female body sensually enveloped in a white gown next to hellish creatures lurking in the dark around her. The contrast of tones is arresting, as is the painting's subject.
What is the meaning of this strange and captivating Fuseli's painting? The question posed by many observers and critics is still not yet definitively answered, although various interpretations coexist. Regardless of its meaning, this work of art is considered a masterpiece of Romanticism and has left a lasting mark on our visual culture. In what follows, we look closer at its history and legacy, and explore its multiple meanings.
The CompositionHenry Fuseli's The Nightmare
Although the painting from 1781 is the most famous, artistHenry Fuseli (1741 - 1825) made three works dealing with the same topic. One of the paintings, from 1790-1, almost completely replicates the original version, with changes in orientation from right to left and a slightly different representation of incubus. The focal point of the composition is a young woman who is reclining over her bed, with her head and hands leaning over its edge, incubus sitting on her chest, and a horse's head appearing from behind a curtain.
Fuseli's friend and biographer, John Knowles, saw the preparatory sketch for the work and wrote that the horse was not part of the early composition but was added by the artist before the exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. To emphasize the effect of night fright and terror, Henry Fuseli usedchiaroscuro technique, juxtaposing the white of the woman to the darkness that envelops her. First exhibited in London, the Nightmare painting is housed today at the museum ofthe Detroit Institute of Art.
In Search of Meaning
Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare painting appeared just a few decades after the publication of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) that includes a definition of a mare. As it reads, a mare or "mara, [is] a spirit that...torment or suffocate sleepers. A morbid oppression in the night resembling the pressure of weight upon the breast". Following this interpretation, the meaning of the painting may appear straightforward - a young woman is shown sleeping, and, at the same time, the artist gives us a glimpse into her dreams that contorted her body in terror.
However, other interpretations, equally valid and convincing, appeared over the years, broadening the complexity of the work and Fuseli's intentions beyond the representation of dreams. Considering the social and political context of the time - the so-called Age of Reason - the painting seems a deliberate provocation and a push to explore other themes than the dominant discourse allowed. Many of Fuseli's contemporaries critiqued the work for its glaring lack of any moralist or religious narrative, which was a common thread behind the most highly-valued pieces of the time, and for its return to depictions of dark and irrational forces that the Enlightenment supposedly extirpated.
Although working at the interjection of Classicism and Romanticism, Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare is more directly linked with the latter for its approach to subject and execution. Often described as sublime, the painting is inscribed with topics related to this period, such as deeper emotional states and dark stories developed from folk tales and scientific advances.
While The Nightmare can be read through a general framework and topics such as sexual assault, horror, or even domestic violence, some historians suggest a more personal interpretation. Fuseli's romantic interest, Anna Landolt, was engaged to be married to another man, which frustrated Fuseli, and perhaps this painting was his response to romantic rejection and unrequited love.
The Nightmare's Legacy
Henry Fuseli also explored the themes of nighttime fears, years before and after his most famous rendering of the subject. In 1780 he made a drawing, The Changeling, in watercolour, black chalk, and grey wash that explores a known folk theme of a child being stolen by a witch. The piece shows a child's shocked mother when she discovers the grotesque replacement. Decades later, he revisits a similar topic in An Incubus Leaving Two Sleeping Women, 1810. The drawing from the 19th century in pencil and wash on paper shows two young naked women, just awakened from sleep, with an evil imp leaving through the window. Here, Fuseli revisits the classical narratives of sexual awakening and erotic arousal, shown through a fairy-tale context.
Fuseli's contemporaries and artists in later periods picked up elements from his work and incorporated them into their art. The impact of The Nightmare's composition and atmosphere continues to be the strongest reference point in these pieces. Thomas Burke's stipple engraving from 1783 directly reproduces Fuseli's painting. A design and a final version for Study for The Covent Garden Night Mare, 1784, by Thomas Rowlandson is also based on Fuseli's piece. The figure of George, the Prince of Whales, lies in the same position as the woman on Fuseli's Nightmare, in James Gillray's Duke William's Ghost from 1799, held today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Created just a few years after the original, these works recreate some of The Nightmare's aspects in detail.
The impact of Henry Fuseli's piece and his art is visible in other creative spheres as well. In literature, its influence can be found in gothic writings focusing on tormented and haunted young women, including a poem by Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin) and the work of Mary Shelley. The claims exist that Shelley and Sigmund Freud had copies of the painting in their homes. Dealing with the subject of nightmares and the subconscious, the picture is also considered a prefiguration of psychoanalytic theories that will develop in the late 19th century.
Fuseli'sNightmarepainting has beenahorror iconever since it was created. Over the years, the works inspired by this masterpiece grew and included new media such as film and video. Modern times did not forget about the gothic masterpiece, and the references to its theme and composition are evident in films such as Frankenstein (1931) and The Marquise of O (1976), and the paintings by Balthus. Political satire also referenced the artwork in lampooning the leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte, George W. Bush, Donald Trump, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Featured image:Henry Fuseli - The Nightmare, 1781, oil on canvas, 180 × 250 cm (Detroit Institute of Arts).Captions, via Creative Commons
