Fuseli’s Nightmare: A portrait of rape?
Henry Fuseli was born on February 7, 1741, in Zürich, Switzerland, and died on April 16, 1825, in London, England. Fuseli is widely regarded as one of the greatest artists of the Romanticism period. Romanticism is exceedingly dramatic in its style, being theatrical in its extreme use of lighting and subject matter. Fuseli was a master of Romanticism in his time, creating striking scenes of the supernatural, the mythological, the terrifying, and the terrific.
Despite his mastery in the arts, Fuseli had harbored a twisted, darker side. The best possible example of both Fuseli’s Romanticism artwork and the dark side of his mind is in his 1781 oil painting, The Nightmare. The horrifying imagery of a disembodied horse’s head with glowing eyes and an incubus (a mythological creature characterized as a creature that sleeps with women in nightmares) atop a splayed-out woman paralyzed in her sleep evokes a sense of dread for all who gaze upon the work.
The Nightmare held the same awe, wonder, and fear in the Romantic period as a horror film would have today. In fact, Fuseli created multiple versions of the work, showing it far and wide, and not unlike a widely regarded horror film of today, it was wildly parodied in popular culture and political satire. In turn, the painting has also been featured in twentieth and twenty-first century works, such as (but not limited to) Carl Jung’s 1964 book, Man and His Symbols, influencing the stylistic challenges presented in the original 1931 Frankenstein film, and more recently, inspiring the thematic events of the 2015 German psychological horror film Der Nachtmahr.
While Nightmare is primarily supernaturally and psychologically unnerving in nature it also contains several connotations sexually. As there is an unfinished portrait on the back of the original canvas, there is speculation that the artwork is not only on a nightmare but a recreation of an erotic dream of Anna Landholdt, who later rejected Fuseli. One could speculate that this work could be on the written accounts of Fuseli’s aforementioned erotic dreams of Landholdt or even speculate that this is an artistic visualization of a rape fantasy. The painting is incredibly disturbing, but it is most truly disturbing in what is more than likely represents.
To quote Beauty and Terror by Brian Oard, “To see The Nightmare as a Romantic image is not only anachronistic; it is a stumbling block to understanding the painting’s truly disturbing power. If we want to know why the work is fascinating and unsettling rather than ludicrous and cartoonish, we must move beyond questions of Romanticism and Classicism, because these concepts reinforce a misleading hierarchy of reality. The woman, because classically derived and human, is seen as implicitly more ‘real’ than the creatures. But when speaking of a painting (especially this painting) ‘real’ is an essentially meaningless word. All three characters are figures of fantasy, all three are equally unreal, and only when the woman is so recognized do we begin to appreciate the profound perversity of the painting. We must see the woman as a constructed thing, and we must understand exactly what she has been constructed for.”
A woman had rejected Fuseli, and in what could be construed as an apparent disregard to the woman as an equal to himself, Fuseli created a painting that can truly disturb the masses, a nightmare with an incubus in which, upon closer inspection, closely resembles Fuseli’s own face.
Experts speculate that the painting is Fuseli’s own waking nightmare from the challenge of rejection, and in that rejection, taking an artistic form of revenge in creating a contorted, twisted woman wracked with fear in her slumber; a ghoulish figure atop her, a phallic horse’s head penetrating a vaginal red curtain.
Rape was a subject Fuseli would revisit in his 1804 work, The Rape of Ganymede, a lithograph made twenty-three years after the creation of Nightmare. Regardless of the initial intention in The Nightmare by Fuseli, the rejection by Landholdt greatly affected him and one could postulate that the rejection struck him all the more due to another great challenge faced by Fuseli: the country from which Landholdt hailed had also rejected Fuseli in the past. Originally born Johann Heinrich Füssli, he had been forced to leave his home country due to exposing the injustices of a corrupt magistrate. In leaving his former home, Fuseli rejected his Swiss surname and embraced a more Italian name in exchange. Perhaps what is widely regarded as Fuseli’s greatest work is his own nightmare: the nightmare of abandonment.
In knowing all of these details and taking a closer look at what The Nightmare insinuates, is there a moral or ethical response one should take in regards to the painting itself? I would argue that any given response in this time to simply viewing the work is a gray area at best. I would argue that merely glancing at any given work is not of any moral consequence. I think the greatest response, especially in viewing this specific work, comes down to how we digest this work. Do we hold the female figure presented in apparent disregard? Do we question the ethical intentions of the artist? Do we praise or do we object to how any one human being is treated in a work?
Perhaps the greatest thing we can do with any work of either the past or the present is to create a constructive dialogue on the work and choose to learn and progress from those conversations. The work of many, not only in the past, but in the present as well, could have and will continue to have morally and ethically questionable intentions. In that is both the beauty and intrigue of art, not in simply seeing an image, but discussing and digesting a created thing. How will you discuss this work? How will you digest this work? Will the discussion and digestion of this work influence your discussion and digestion of the next piece you view, or will you glance and walk away? How will this affect your outlook outside of the gallery? Let’s discuss. Let’s digest. We may never truly know the interior design of Fuseli’s mind, but we most certainly can try.