The Nightmare (1781) 
By Henry Fuseli (Switzerland, 1741-1825) 
The nightmare is a 1781 oil painting by swiss artist Henry Fuseli. It shows a woman in deep sleep with her arms thrown below her, and with a demonic and apelike incubus crouched on her chest. The painting's dreamlike and haunting erotic evocation of infatuation and obsession was a huge popular success. For contemporary viewers, the nightmare invoked the relationship of the incubus and the horse (mare) to nightmares. The work was likely inspired by the waking dreams experienced by Fuseli and his contemporaries, who found that these experiences related to folkloric beliefs like the germanic tales about demons and witches that possessed people who slept alone.
This item is screen printed on stretched canvas and measures 12"x18"x1.25"