Gabriel von Max (1840 Prague - 1915 Munich)

The Nightmare, after Johann Heinrich Füssli

circa 1860

oil on canvas, framed

21 x 26.5 cm (framed 29,5 x 35 cm)

signed lower left "G. Max"

The present painting is a diminutive and loose copy of the Swiss-British artist Johann Heinrich Füssli's famous painting of 1781, "The Nightmare," 101,6 x 127 cm, now in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts.  Füssli's shocking painting was quite popular, and he painted at least three other surviving versions, one of which is at Goethe House in Frankfurt am Main.  The painting also circulated widely as a reproductive engraving, most famously by Thomas Burke in 1783.  While Gabriel von Max was an art student at the academies in Prague, Vienna, and Munich between 1855 and 1867, he likely encountered Füssli's work and made this copy of "The Nightmare."