The Night-Hag Visiting Lapland Witches
1796
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
40 x 49 3/4 in. (101.6 x 126.4 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Bequest of Lillian S. Timken, by exchange, and Victor Wilbour Memorial, The Alfred N. Punnett Endowment, Marquand and Charles B. Curtis Funds, 1980
Accession Number
1980.411
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the shadowy realm of Fuseli's *The Night-Hag Visitingland Witches* (1796), an oil on canvas that captures the artist's fascination with the supernatural and macabre. Measuring 40 x 49 3/4 inches, this dramatic painting depicts a night-hag—a, folklore-inspired demon—amid Lapland witches, incorporating haunting elements like nude female figures, vulnerable children, and ominous knives. Fuseli, a Swiss-born Romantic painter active in England, drew from Shakespearean visions and Nordic myths, blending eroticism with terror in his signature style of elongated forms and intense chiaroscuro...
About the Artist
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), born Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, was a Swiss-British painter whose visionary works exploring dreams, nightmares, and psychological terror made him one of the most original figures of the Romantic movement. His art bridged Neoclassical discipline with Romantic emotionalism, creating images of supernatural intensity that would influence artists from William Blake to t...