[Skip to content] [Skip to main navigation] [Skip to quick links] [Go to accessibility information]

Art UK
Menu
SIGN IN
Search
Shop
  • About
  • Discover
  • Learn
  • Stories
  • Donate Donate

Main menu

Close
  • Home
  • Search form

    • Discover

      • Artworks
      • Artists
      • Topics
      • People
      • Art terms
      • Stories
      • Curations
    • Learn

      • Learning resources
      • The Superpower of Looking
      • Visual literacy
      • Write on Art
    • Participate

      • Tagger
      • Curate
      • Art Detective
    • Visit

      • Venues
    • Support us

      • Become a Patron
      • Our funders
    • About

      • What we do
      • Our impact
      • Who we are
      • Who funds us
    • For collections

      • Partner collections
      • Digital skills for collections
    • Shop

      • Prints
      • Art themes
      • Books
      • Gifts
      • About the shop
  • Sign in
  • Register

Remember me (uncheck on a public computer)

By signing up you agree to terms and conditions and privacy policy

Forgotten password?

Enter your email address below and we’ll send you a link to reset your password


Cancel

I agree to the Art UK terms and conditions and privacy policy

Sign up to the Art UK newsletter, a weekly edit of insightful art stories


Finding Art UK useful? Support us to keep it free.

Donate Finding Art UK useful? Support us to keep it free.

Topics

Fear and horror

  • Summary
The Haunted House
© the copyright holder. Image credit: Loughborough University

The Haunted House

unknown artist

Loughborough University

Victims are seldom shown sympathy in classical myths and biblical stories depicted in art; more often they are expected to show fortitude and willingness to take revenge. Not until the Romantic period of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are fear and horror both explicitly illustrated and seen as emotions and feelings to be actively enjoyed – hence the popularity of horror movies.


Read more

The power of painting to produce these emotions was first and perhaps most successfully shown by Goya and Fuseli. Turner illustrated the fearful attraction of Alpine scenery. The horrors of war were shown more explicitly in art through the nineteenth century, culminating in the paintings of the war artists of the First World War, and Picasso’s Guernica in the twentieth century (which is held in Spain’s national collection).

Artworks

  • The Haunt
    The Haunt Laurence Stephen Lowry (1887–1976)
    The Lowry
  • Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers
    Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers Henry Fuseli (1741–1825)
    Tate Britain
  • The Haunted House
    The Haunted House unknown artist
    Loughborough University
  • Lucretia
    Lucretia André Bauchant (1873–1958)
    Southampton City Art Gallery
  • A Coastal Scene with a Cliff, a Fishing Boat and a Merchantman in a Storm
    A Coastal Scene with a Cliff, a Fishing Boat and a Merchantman in a Storm Henry Redmore (1820–1887)
    Nottinghamshire County Hall
  • Idealogical Conflict
    Idealogical Conflict Anthony Pilbro (b.1954)
    Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
  • The Stag at Bay
    The Stag at Bay Richard Ansdell (1815–1885)
    Hatton Gallery
  • 478 more

Stories

  • Bernard Meadows: post-war fear, the human figure and the shadow of Henry Moore

    Matthew Retallick

  • Arts Council Collection exhibition 'Too Cute! by Rachel Maclean at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery
    Too cute! What happens when sweet gets sinister?

    Jade King

  • You can see the 'Roberson and Co.' label, a company that made Mummy Brown Paint in London
    The corpse on the canvas: the story of 'mummy brown' paint

    Lauren R. Bruce

  • Five spooky objects in the Ashmolean Museum

    Rose de Freitas

  • Ghosts, ghouls and spectres: hauntingly good art

    Andrew Shore

  • Pat Douthwaite: high priestess of the grotesque

    Susannah Thompson

  • Tabley Old Hall
    The 'vulgar ghosts' of Tabley Old Hall

    Sarah Webb

  • A rollercoaster of a career: the figurative art of Peter Howson

    Chris Mugan

  • 1896, oil on panel by James Ensor (1860–1949)
    The torments of James Ensor

    Adam Wattam

  • Write on Art: Paul Nash's 'We Are Making a New World'

    Evie Wildish

  • Art Matters podcast: the art history of witches

    Ferren Gipson

  • Holding skulls: handling death in art

    Jon Sleigh

  • The bad place: a visual history of hell

    Aida Amoako

  • Erchyll: depictions of bodies under duress in the collection of STORIEL, Bangor

    David Cleary

  • Under the skin: flaying, anatomy and écorché in art

    Tim Smith-Laing

  • 1844, colour woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861)
    The nation's scariest art

    Molly Tresadern

  • Not bleak, but bleary: the politics of alienation within the art of Llanelli

    Joshua Jones

  • The nation's scariest art, part 2: dare you explore the Wellcome Collection?

    Jade King

  • Man on Fire
    Tim Shaw's 'Man on Fire': a contemporary monument to the horror of war

    Claire English

  • Dance of Death: The Pedlar
    The power of art during times of plague

    Tim Cornwell

  • The Convalescent
    Six Scandinavian artists who embraced isolationist gloom

    India Lewis

  • 'I paint dead people': posthumous portraits

    Jade King

  • Sparking the Gothic imagination: Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' and Polidori's 'The Vampyre'

    Andrew Shore

  • Tim Knox makes some morbid discoveries on Art UK

    Tim Knox

  • A brief art history of the seven deadly sins

    Philomena Epps

Learning resources

  • licide-lr-thumbnail-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    'Unearthed (Lidice)' and the power of community
    • KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
      KS4 (ENG)
      KS4 (NI)
      CfE L4 (SCO)
      CfE Sen. (SCO)
      KS4 (WAL)
  • sculpture-near-you-hitchcock-s-reel-1.jpg
    Video
    Sculpture near you: 'Hitchcock's Reel'
    • KS3 (ENG)
      KS3 (NI)
      CfE L3 (SCO)
      KS3 (WAL)
      KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)
      SEND (ENG)
      SEND (NI)
      ASN (SCO)
      SEND (WAL)
  • ntv-hap-79-001-1.jpg
    Lesson plan
    The First World War in art: 'The Bombardment of the Hartlepools (16 December 1914)'
    • KS2 (ENG)
      KS2 (NI)
      CfE L2 (SCO)
      PS3 (WAL)

Do you know someone who would love this resource?
Tell them about it...

https://artuk.org/discover/topics/fear-and-horror Copy
Link copied to clipboard!
  • bloomberg
  • dlb foundation
  • Supported by

    Arts CouncilArts Council
  • heritage fund
® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).

Follow us

    • Join us on Facebook
    • Follow us on YouTube
    • Top
  • Subscribe to newsletter
  • Donate to Art UK

Quick links

  • Contact us
  • FAQ
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy policy
  • AI policy
  • Use of cookies
  • Copyright notice
  • Accessibility
  • Shop
  • Disclaimer
  • Jobs
  • Website credits
® is a registered trade mark of the Public Catalogue Foundation.
Art UK is the operating name of the Public Catalogue Foundation, a charity registered in England and Wales (1096185) and Scotland (SC048601).