The Nightmare

I studied Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare daily for the better part of a year—though not quite under museum conditions. A reproduction of the work adorned my college bathroom, where it hung eye-level above the toilet. There it bewildered visitors and frightened people at parties. For me, though, in its frank, proto-Freudian symbolism of the unconscious' worries, it offered strange comfort.

Henry Fuseli. The Nightmare, 1781; oil on canvas; 40 x 49.88 in. Courtesy of the Detroit Institute of Arts.