Henry Fuseli: The Swiss Painter Who Invented the Horror Movie 150 Years Early
Meritioum · The Story Behind the Painting
A demon crouched on a sleeping woman’s chest, a ghostly horse bursting through the curtains — he painted our nightmares before anyone thought nightmares were worth painting.
Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) was a Swiss-born painter who moved to Britain and built an entire career out of the strange, the supernatural and the downright terrifying. While his contemporaries painted calm landscapes and flattering portraits, Fuseli painted demons, witches, ghosts and fever dreams. His most famous picture — a monstrous imp squatting on a sleeping woman while a phantom horse looms behind — is one of the most genuinely unsettling images in Western art, and it made him a sensation. He was learned, arrogant, wildly imaginative and gloriously weird. If you think old art is all polite and boring, Fuseli is here to change your mind by scaring you a little.
| Who | Henry Fuseli (born Johann Heinrich Füssli) — Swiss-British painter and writer on art |
|---|---|
| Lived | 7 February 1741 (Zürich) – 17 April 1825 (London), aged 84 |
| Era | A pioneer of Romanticism and the “Gothic” imagination |
| Famous for | The Nightmare (exhibited 1782) |
| Obsessions | The supernatural, dreams, dark magic, literature, Michelangelo |
| Day jobs | Professor of Painting and Keeper at the Royal Academy |
| Influenced | William Blake and a generation of younger British artists |
Who was Henry Fuseli?
He was born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich in 1741, the second of eighteen children — yes, eighteen. His father was a portrait painter, but he wanted young Johann to become a priest, and gave him a rigorous classical education. Fuseli actually took holy orders in 1761. But then he helped a friend expose a corrupt local official, the official’s powerful family came after them, and Fuseli was effectively forced to leave Switzerland. His career as a clergyman was over almost before it began.
He drifted through Germany and, in 1765, arrived in England, scraping a living as a writer — because Fuseli was formidably well-read, fluent in four languages, and more comfortable with books than almost anyone in the art world he was about to conquer. Then he met the most powerful painter in Britain, Sir Joshua Reynolds, showed him his drawings, and Reynolds told him to become an artist. That settled it. He Italianised his name from Füssli to the grander-sounding “Fuseli,” and never looked back.
Eight years in Italy — falling in love with Michelangelo
In 1770 Fuseli made the artist’s pilgrimage to Italy, and he stayed for eight years. What gripped him there wasn’t the gentle grace of Raphael but the sheer overwhelming power of Michelangelo. He became obsessed with the muscular, heroic, larger-than-life human figures of the Sistine Chapel, and that obsession shaped everything he did afterwards.
This is the key to understanding a Fuseli painting. His figures are never ordinary. They’re exaggerated, twisted into dramatic poses, pitched (in his own belief) on an ideal, heroic scale — because he thought a certain amount of exaggeration was necessary for the grandest, most serious kind of art. He wanted to overwhelm you. There’s a wonderful detail from his Rome years: he liked to look at the giant classical horse-taming statues on the Monte Cavallo in the evening, seen against a murky sky or lit up by flashes of lightning. That tells you everything about his taste — drama, scale, darkness, storm.
The Nightmare: the painting that made him famous
In 1781 Fuseli painted the picture that would define him: The Nightmare. It was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1782, and it caused a sensation — nothing quite like it had been seen before.
Look at what’s happening. A young woman in white lies sprawled backwards across a bed, deeply asleep or unconscious. On her chest crouches a small, dark, grinning demon — an incubus, a creature from folklore believed to sit on sleepers and cause bad dreams. And behind, pushing through the curtains, is the wild-eyed head of a ghostly horse — a visual pun on the “mare” in “night-mare.” The painting doesn’t illustrate a story from the Bible or ancient history. It illustrates a feeling: the helplessness and dread of a nightmare, made visible. That was genuinely new.
People were fascinated and disturbed in equal measure, and the image became wildly popular through printed engravings. Fuseli, never one to leave a good thing alone, painted several different versions of it himself. It remains one of the most recognisable and most parodied images in art — and it’s the reason many people know his name at all.
The Nightmare hits a nerve because it visualises something we’ve all felt but rarely see painted: the terror of a bad dream, the sense of a weight on your chest, the feeling of being watched while helpless. Fuseli painted the inside of the mind — its fears and fantasies — rather than the outside world. In doing so he anticipated, by more than a century, the psychological art of the Symbolists, the Surrealists, and every horror film that ever put a monster at the foot of the bed.
He didn’t paint the world you see. He painted the things you see with your eyes shut — the dreams, the demons, the dread.The Fuseli difference
Shakespeare, Milton and a taste for literature
Fuseli was an intellectual who loved books as much as brushes, so it’s no surprise that literature fed much of his art. When he returned to Britain in 1779, a commission was waiting: the publisher John Boydell was setting up a “Shakespeare Gallery,” a huge project of paintings illustrating Shakespeare’s plays, and Fuseli painted several pieces for it. His dramatic, supernatural imagination was perfect for Shakespeare’s witches, ghosts and fairies.
He was so taken with the idea that he tried to create his own version devoted to the poet John Milton. Between roughly 1791 and 1800 he produced a “Milton Gallery” of 47 paintings, many of them enormous, inspired by Paradise Lost and Milton’s other works. It was a passion project on a gigantic scale. Commercially, sadly, it flopped, and the exhibition closed in 1800 — but it shows the sheer ambition of the man.
The man himself: brilliant, sharp-tongued and eccentric
Fuseli was a genuine character. He rose to the top of the British art establishment — he became a full member of the Royal Academy in 1790, then its Professor of Painting, and later its Keeper, holding senior posts for decades. But he never lost his outsider’s edge or his famously sharp tongue.
He had strong, quotable opinions about everything. Faced with painting the natural world, he reportedly snapped, “Damn Nature! she always puts me out” — he painted no landscapes and only two portraits in his whole career, preferring the worlds inside his own head. When the pioneering feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft became infatuated with him, he was dismissive, once declaring, “I hate clever women. They are only troublesome.” (A thoroughly unpleasant line, and a revealing one — he was no saint.) His working method was just as unconventional: he squeezed dry powdered pigment onto his brush and mixed it with whatever was to hand, trusting to accident for the effect.
Five things they don’t teach you about Fuseli
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He trained to be a priest, not a painter
Fuseli took holy orders in 1761 and only became an artist years later, after being forced out of Switzerland for helping expose a corrupt official. Art was his second career.
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He didn’t paint in oil until he was 25
A late starter in the medium, he never painted in a conventional, methodical way — he distributed colours randomly on his palette and mixed dry pigment on the brush, relying partly on chance. For a man obsessed with control of the figure, his technique was gloriously chaotic.
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He hated painting nature — and did it almost never
“Damn Nature! she always puts me out,” he said. He produced no landscapes and just two portraits in his entire life. His subject was always the imagination, not observation.
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He was a serious writer and teacher, not just a painter
Fuseli wrote art criticism, delivered a celebrated series of twelve lectures at the Royal Academy, spoke four languages, and helped prepare an English translation of Homer. He was one of the most learned figures in British art.
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He directly inspired William Blake
The visionary poet-artist William Blake was inspired by Fuseli, and the two were friends. Fuseli’s wild, imaginative, literary art helped make Blake’s own possible — a direct line from one visionary to another.
A Fuseli timeline
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1741 | Born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, second of 18 children |
| 1761 | Takes holy orders; soon forced to leave Switzerland |
| 1765 | Arrives in England, working as a writer |
| 1770–78 | Eight years in Italy; becomes obsessed with Michelangelo; changes his name to Fuseli |
| 1779 | Returns to Britain; painting for Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery |
| 1781 | Paints The Nightmare (exhibited 1782) |
| 1788 | Marries his former model Sophia Rawlins; becomes an ARA |
| 1790 | Full Royal Academician, with Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent as his diploma work |
| 1799 | Appointed Professor of Painting; opens his Milton Gallery of 47 works |
| 1825 | Dies aged 84; buried in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral |
Why Fuseli still matters
Fuseli did something radical and lasting: he made the inner world — dreams, fears, desires, nightmares — a serious subject for great art. In an age of reason and order, he insisted that the dark, irrational, uncontrollable parts of the mind were worth painting on the grandest scale. That was a foundational move for the whole Romantic movement, which prized emotion and imagination over cool logic, and it links him to his contemporary J.M.W. Turner, who chased the same overwhelming quality of the “sublime” — awe mixed with terror — in storms and light.
Look forward from Fuseli and you can see his descendants everywhere: in the Symbolist painters of dreams, in the Surrealists who made the unconscious their whole subject, and in the entire visual language of horror — the monster at the bedside, the figure in the shadows, the beautiful sleeper in danger. He was a pioneer of Romanticism and, arguably, the first great painter of the nightmare. Next time a film gives you a genuine chill with a single unsettling image, remember the strange, brilliant Swiss priest-turned-painter who got there first, in oil, in 1781.
Henry Fuseli: frequently asked questions
Who was Henry Fuseli?
A Swiss-born painter and writer (1741–1825) who spent most of his career in Britain and specialised in supernatural, dramatic and literary subjects. Born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, he became a leading figure of early Romanticism and a senior member of the Royal Academy. He is best known for The Nightmare.
What is The Nightmare about?
Painted in 1781, it shows a sleeping woman with a small demonic imp (an incubus) crouched on her chest and a ghostly horse’s head appearing behind. Rather than telling a specific story, it visualises the feeling of a nightmare itself — dread, helplessness and dark fantasy. It made Fuseli famous and remains one of the most iconic images in art.
Why did Fuseli paint supernatural subjects?
He favoured the supernatural and the “sublime” — the awe-inspiring and terrifying — believing that grand, serious art needed heightened emotion and a degree of exaggeration. Deeply influenced by Michelangelo and by literature such as Shakespeare and Milton, he was far more interested in the imagination than in the everyday world.
Was Fuseli part of the Romantic movement?
Yes — he is considered a pioneer of Romanticism and of the “Gothic” imagination. His focus on emotion, dreams, terror and the supernatural, and his rejection of pure reason and observation, were central to the Romantic sensibility that flourished in the decades after him.
Where can you see Fuseli’s work?
The best-known version of The Nightmare is at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Tate in London holds important works including Percival Delivering Belisane, and the Royal Academy of Arts in London holds Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent. His works are also in major collections such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington.
Sources
- Wikipedia — Henry Fuseli (main source): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fuseli
- Detroit Institute of Arts — The Nightmare: https://dia.org/collection/nightmare-42882
- Tate — Henry Fuseli: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/henry-fuseli-1123
- Royal Academy of Arts — Thor Battering the Midgard Serpent: https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/work-of-art/thor-battering-the-midgard-serpent
- National Gallery of Art, Washington — Henry Fuseli: https://www.nga.gov/artists/2513-henry-fuseli