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."
