John Henry Fuseli (1781). The Nightmare [oil on canvas]. The Detroit Institute of Arts.

Fuseli’s The Nightmare highlights the conceptual differences between the Enlightenment and the stylistic reaction to it in the visual arts as represented by Romanticism. Works of the enlightenment, in short, were Apollonian in tone, emphasizing reason and moderation both conceptually and formally. Master works of Romanticism, to which this work belongs, painted the emotional extremes and instinctual forces generated within human experience in a positive, or at least celebratory, light. In the example of The Nightmare, inspiring an emotional impression is clearly a primary goal. To the tastes of many experts and critics of the time, the lack of any attempt to temper these extremes was offensive. 

The fantastical vision Fuseli has created certainly inspires dread. While the scene is rendered as a dramatic, tenebristic dream-state, the direct and gaze of the demon transports the observer into the woman’s nightmare. The woman glows from an internal source of purity, her body clearly contorted in an unnatural manner, afflicted with the weight of a sinuous, mincing demon, all of which is reflective of the composition’s disturbing tone. The dense values, impression of heat and calibrated indistinction of edges transport the scene from reality to hell in a dream-state. There is a simultaneous distance and close relationship to the observer. 

The allegorical content of this work is referenced by the erotic pose and dress of the subject and the particular kind of creature that is seated on the center of her body. It is an incubus, a nearly archetypical concept, which is a demon that forces intercourse with a sleeping or defenseless woman. Different cultures throughout history have had their own version or versions of the creature, which reduces the Romantic content of this masterpiece to its emotional content. 

Directional forces and emotional content would create an unbalanced composition if not for the formal stability Fuseli establishes. Even this is in conflict, summarized by the tenebristic use of tones, but he has created a sense of stability with tonal density that results in an asymmetrically balanced composition. Typically, dominant formal choices have a binding effect on a composition, but Fuseli uses a masculine tone and a sense of heat to create tension and interest. As typical, formal equivalencies in chroma, value and positive/negative space also generate interest. While emotionally stark, taken in whole this composition is tempered.