The story behind the painting
The Nightmare
Fuseli turns a bedroom into a scene of helplessness, pressure, and supernatural fear.
- A woman lies collapsed across a red-covered bed.
- Her white dress cuts through the dark room.
- A squat incubus sits on her chest.
- A horse's pale head bursts through the curtain.
- Red folds spill beneath the white dress.
- The woman's limp hand hangs beyond the mattress.
- The fallen body remains pinned beneath the incubus.
The Nightmare is a 1781 painting by Henry Fuseli of a sleeping woman sprawled across a bed while a demon crouches on her chest and a horse’s head pushes through the curtains; it is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare (1781) turns the feeling of a frightening dream into a scene we can look at. A woman lies across a bed, a small creature sits on her chest, and a horse's head emerges from the darkness. The Detroit Institute of Arts explains the scene as an image of the sleeper's distress, rather than a literal view of her dream.
What does The Nightmare painting mean?
The painting makes fear feel physical. The woman's head and arms fall back while the creature sits upright above her. Read together, these poses suggest vulnerability and pressure. That is a way of reading the visible arrangement; the image does not tell us a complete story with a single resolved ending.
What is the creature on the woman's chest?
It is an incubus. The British Museum's record of Thomas Burke's 1783 engraving after the painting identifies the figure by that name. Look at its upright body against the woman's slack pose: the smaller figure becomes the dominant presence because of where Fuseli places it.
What does the horse add to the scene?
The horse appears behind the curtain, with bright eyes set against the dark background. It gives us another face to confront after we notice the creature. The room contains recognisable furniture, but this unexpected visitor makes it feel unstable. That visual effect is clearer than any claim that every object has one fixed symbolic meaning.
Try looking: follow the light
Start with the woman's pale dress. Follow the light across her body, then look up to the creature and across to the horse's eyes. Notice how little detail Fuseli needs in the surrounding darkness. The three figures hold our attention while much of the room recedes. Now return to the whole painting: has the brightest area begun to feel like the most exposed one?
Why is The Nightmare famous?
The image circulated beyond the original canvas. The British Museum holds Burke's engraving, published in 1783, and a 1784 political parody that reworks its arrangement. The Detroit Institute of Arts also records that a reproduction hung in Sigmund Freud's Vienna apartment in the 1920s. These are documented examples of the image's continuing reach, rather than proof of a single intended interpretation.
Where is the original painting?
The 1781 oil painting belongs to the Detroit Institute of Arts, accession number 55.5.A. Its collection record gives the dimensions, ownership history and current display information.
Why did Fuseli paint The Nightmare?
According to English Wikipedia, the picture was likely inspired by the waking dreams that Fuseli and his contemporaries experienced, which they connected with folk tales of demons and witches that possessed people who slept alone. The word ‘nightmare’ comes from the mara, a spirit of Scandinavian myth sent to torment or suffocate sleepers. A preliminary chalk sketch has no horse, so Fuseli may have added it as an afterthought. (Wikipedia)
Some art historians also read the painting as personal. A few years earlier, in Zürich, Fuseli had fallen in love with Anna Landholdt, a niece of his friend Johann Kaspar Lavater; her father disapproved of his proposal, and she soon married a family friend. The art historian H. W. Janson suggested that the sleeping woman represents her and the demon Fuseli himself. An unfinished portrait of a girl on the back of the canvas may show her. (Wikipedia)
Who was Henry Fuseli?
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) was born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, the second of 18 children of a portrait and landscape painter. He was ordained in 1761 but had to leave Switzerland after helping Lavater expose an unjust magistrate. In England, Joshua Reynolds advised him to devote himself to art, and from 1770 to 1778 he lived in Italy, where he changed his name to the more Italian-sounding Fuseli. (Wikipedia)
He spent much of his career in Britain, and many of his successful works, The Nightmare among them, depict supernatural experiences. He painted for John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery, became Professor of Painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy, and influenced younger British artists, including William Blake. (Wikipedia)
What happened to The Nightmare after 1782?
Fuseli had shown at the Royal Academy many times without success, but critics reacted with horrified fascination when The Nightmare was exhibited there in 1782. According to English Wikipedia, it became his first commercially successful work: the original sold for twenty guineas, while Thomas Burke’s engraving earned its publisher, John Raphael Smith, more than 500 pounds. Fuseli painted other versions, at least three of which survive; the most important, from 1790–91, is in the Goethe Museum in Frankfurt. (Wikipedia)
The Detroit Institute of Arts records the canvas’s owners. The earliest listed is Sir Brooke Boothby of Ashbourne Hall, Derbyshire. By 1879 it belonged to H. Haskett Smith, and that year it appeared in the Royal Academy’s winter exhibition of old masters. It was auctioned at Christie’s in London on 9 May 1896, later belonged to the Earl of Harrowby, and passed through dealers in London and New York before the museum bought it in 1955. (Detroit Institute of Arts)
Old painting, very current fear.
The details at a glance
See it in person
Detroit Institute of Arts · Detroit
Check display, special dates and entry conditions.
Official visitor information ↗Sources and further reading
- The Nightmare — Detroit Institute of Arts
- Artist biography: Henry Fuseli (Wikipedia, English)
- The Nightmare (Wikipedia, English)