Halloween
Creepy paintings for Halloween
Demons, fallen angels, a one-eyed giant and a skeleton with a fiddle: unsettling paintings from museum collections. Read the free painting stories below, and meet the others in the Everyday A Painting app on the dates shown.
Read their stories now
The Nightmare
Henry Fuseli · Detroit Institute of Arts
Fuseli turns a bedroom into a scene of helplessness, pressure, and supernatural fear.
The Fallen Angel
Alexandre Cabanel · Musée Fabre, Montpellier
Cabanel shows the fallen Satan hiding his shame while the angels he has lost rise behind him.
The Desperate Man
Gustave Courbet · Musée d'Orsay, Paris
Courbet looks directly at us with wide eyes and both hands raised into his hair. The close crop makes the expression difficult to avoid.
Self-Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle
Arnold Böcklin · Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Alte Nationalgalerie
Death leans over Böcklin's shoulder and plays the fiddle while the artist listens with palette and brush in hand.
Revealed in the app
Lucifer
Franz von Stuck · National Gallery, Sofia
Stuck’s fallen angel crouches in the dark, chin on his hand, and stares straight out with glowing eyes.
In the app on September 28
The Fall of the Rebel Angels
Pieter Bruegel the Elder · Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels
Archangel Michael and his angels drive the rebels out of heaven, and as they fall the rebels turn into monstrous hybrid creatures.
In the app on October 5
Pandemonium
John Martin · Musée du Louvre, Paris
Satan stands in the foreground as he raises Pandemonium, the demons’ palace from Milton’s Paradise Lost; Martin designed the serpent-and-dragon frame himself.
In the app on October 12
The Cyclops
Odilon Redon · Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
From behind a mountain, the Cyclops Polyphemus spies on the sleeping nymph Galatea, and his single, unnaturally large eye dominates the picture.
In the app on October 27
The Magic Circle
John William Waterhouse · Tate, London
With a wand, a sorceress traces a circle on the ground around herself and a smoking cauldron, while ravens wait outside it.
In the app on October 30
Each painting is revealed in the app on its day, with a guided Story that moves to every detail it describes. The app requires a subscription; eligible new subscribers may get a 7-day free trial.