In 1781, Swiss-born British artist Henry Fuseli shocked the Western art world with his oil painting The Nightmare. Unveiled at the London grove street art Royal Academy of Arts in 1782, the piece shattered the academic conventions of the Enlightenment. While his contemporaries focused on historical accuracy, moral order, and classical beauty, Fuseli bypassed the conscious mind entirely. He chose instead to illustrate a raw, visceral presentation of the human subconscious, laying the groundwork for the Gothic Romanticism movement.

While the image strikes a universal chord of terror, its creation was fueled by Fuseli’s intense personal distress. Art historians examining the original canvas discovered an unfinished portrait of a young woman sketched on the reverse side.

The woman was Anna Landolt, with whom Fuseli had fallen madly in love during a trip to Switzerland. Her father fiercely opposed the relationship and forced her to marry another man. Devastated and consumed by romantic rejection, Fuseli channeled his sexual frustration, jealousy, and obsession into the painting. The vulnerable woman draped across the bed is widely recognized by scholars as a psychological projection of Landolt.

Fuseli constructed a complex visual language by blending contemporary street slang, theatrical lighting, and ancient European folklore:

• The Sleeping Woman: Draped in glowing white fabric and illuminated by a sharp spotlight, her limp, contorted posture mimics both deep sleep and physical death. Her exposed, arched neck emphasizes a state of absolute vulnerability and helplessness.
• The Incubus (The Mara): Crouched heavily upon the woman’s chest is a grotesque, ape-like demon. In European folklore, this creature was an incubus or mara (the etymological root of the word “nightmare”). These nocturnal entities were believed to torment sleeping victims by suffocating them and inducing dark, terrifying visions.
• The Spectral Horse: Bursting through the velvet background curtains is a ghostly horse with pale, unseeing eyes. This element serves as an intentional visual pun on the literal word “night-mare” (a female horse of the night). It shifts the scene from a private dream to a claustrophobic, voyeuristic haunting.

The immense popularity of the original landscape painting led to high demand for reproductions. Fuseli capitalized on this by partnering with engravers to sell cheap prints across Europe. He also painted several variations of the scene himself.

Most notably, Fuseli created vertical “portrait” format variants, such as his 1790 version. This portrait layout compressed the composition significantly. By narrowing the horizontal space, Fuseli brought the demonic horse and the crouching incubus much closer to the sleeping woman’s face, magnifying the psychological suffocating pressure of the encounter.

Fuseli’s masterpiece predicted major shifts in both science and literature over a century before they entered mainstream culture:

• Pre-Freudian Psychology: Painted long before Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams, The Nightmare is celebrated as the first true visual representation of the subconscious mind. Freud was deeply fascinated by the image and famously kept a print of it hanging on the wall of his Vienna apartment.
• Gothic Literature: The painting acted as a direct creative catalyst for Mary Shelley’s landmark novel Frankenstein. Her vivid description of Elizabeth Lavenza’s murder scene—where she is found dead, thrown across a bed with her head hanging down—is a direct, deliberate homage to the posture of Fuseli’s sleeping woman.

Today, the original 1781 landscape masterpiece resides in the Detroit Institute of Arts, while his prominent 1790 portrait variation is preserved at the Goethe-Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.