The 10 most nightmarish artists

For some artists, depictions of Christ on the cross or nubile women in various states of undress just isn’t enough. They have other things on their mind. Darker, more sinister things…

1. Redon

Redon’s work is wonderfully off-kilter: “undreamed-of images” as Huysmans put it. (Above)

Check out: The Cyclops

2. Bosch

Bosch has become a byword for “nightmarish”, but it’s really worth revisiting his work The Garden of Earthly Delights again and again – it never loses its particular power to unnerve.

Check out: The Garden of Earthly Delights: Hell

3. Goya

There’s a lot to choose from with Goya – his work is consistently shot through with hellish imagery, reflecting the breakdown of his psyche during his later years.

Check out: Saturn Devouring One of His Children

4. Rubens

Evoking hell exercised the imaginations of many of the great artists, but few captured it with quite the visceral terror of Rubens.

Check out: Descent into Hell of the Damned

5. Rackham

Perhaps the greatest children’s book illustrator of all time, Rackham produced endless images of crooked creepiness, including the definitive renderings of Alice in Wonderland.

Check out: Calling Shapes and Beckoning Shadows Dire

6. Durer

Durer’s output was vast, and often – as in the case of his famous woodcuts – uniquely disturbing.

Check out: The Revelation of St John the Divine

7. Blake

“Mad Billy Blake”, as no one called him, saw visions of angels on London streets. It’s no wonder, then, that he could come up with illustrations as distinctly odd as the ones collected on Artfinder.

Check out: The Six Footed Serpent Attacking Agnolo Brunelleschi

8. Moreau

The French symbolists were particularly good at creating imagery of rich peculiarity. Moreau’s Apparition is one of the strangest paintings in the canon.

Check out: The Apparition

9. Fuseli

A crazed horse looming out of the dark and a weird bat creature sitting on your bosom? Yes, this is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

Check out: The Nightmare

10. Francken the Younger

Skeletons always conjure fear and unease, and Francken’s Dance of Death contains two particularly menacing examples.

Check out: Dance of Death

I’ve added all these paintings to a Collection, which you can view here. You can Collect your favourite artworks on Artfinder to create your own personal galleries, which can be shared with friends. Why not create your own Collection of nightmarish art and tell us about it in the comments?