Halloween is here - the time when we delight in all things spooky! With its origins going back over 2,000 years to the Celtic festival Samhain, Halloween has long been associated with ghosts, spirits, and the supernatural realm. People would wear costumes to blend in with and pacify restless souls. Let's get in the Halloween spirit today with a look back at some of art history's most chilling paintings of ghosts.
Ghosts have appeared in myths, legends, and artworks across cultures for thousands of years. They represent the enduring human fascination with the supernatural, the afterlife, and our innate fears of death and the unknown. In many cultures, ghosts are thought to be spirits that linger due to unresolved issues before death or an inability to accept passing away. They haunt the living out of anger, sadness, or a desire for vengeance. Other legends tell of ghosts that come back to help loved ones or protect places they cherished when alive.
Artists throughout history have conjured up ghosts and spirits in paintings, showing them as transparent figures, wispy forms, shadows, or spectral visions. Let's explore some spine-tingling examples- these artworks give visual form to mankind's eternal curiosity about ghosts. Each artist brings their own style to depicting figures that straddle two worlds - the living and the dead.
William Blake was a British visionary Romantic poet and painter whose fantastical works reflected his spiritual visions and imagination. This is one of Blake’s earliest tempera painting "Ghost of a Flea” from 1819-20 . The artist said this muscular, vampire-like apparition with glowing eyes visited him in a séance and claimed to be the ghost of a flea.
Richard Tennant Cooper was a Victorian-era painter known for sinister and melodramatic genre scenes drawn from stories and contemporary events. His 1885 etching "A Ghostly Skeleton Trying to Strangle a Sick Child" captures a frightening supernatural scene-
A floating skeleton wraps its bony hands menacingly around a bedridden child's neck. Victorian ghost stories don't get much more chilling than this.
Dorothea Tanning was a pioneering surrealist painter known for her fantastical works depicting dreamlike scenes with uncanny figures. Her take on a ghost is seen in this 1943 painting "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." This surrealist artist conjures a ghostly woman playing a lyre, with a canine spirit and floating doors surrounding her in an eerie dreamscape. Tanning brings her signature surrealism to create a haunting, otherworldly scene.
Carel Weight was a British artist who often painted mysterious, psychological scenarios influenced by his time serving in WWII. His 1980 work "Ghost in Garden" portrays a transparent spirit floating pensively among the trees and flowers of an English garden.
The paintinggives us a melancholy spirit in poetic setting, this ghostly woman in white is perhaps regretting she can no longer smell the flowers.
Kim Simonsson is a contemporary Finnish ceramic artist who creates ghostly, melancholy sculptures of strange child-like characters. His 2011 work "Ghost" depicts an eerie phantom child in torn clothes with hollow, haunting eyes and a hooded cloak. Equally creepy and poignant, this ghost projects a palpable sense of loss.
From William Blake's haunting tempera painting to Dorothea Tanning's surreal ghostly dreamscape, these works reflect mankind's age-old fascination with the supernatural realm. Each artist brings their unique perspective to depicting spirits and figures that straddle two worlds - the living and the dead. These ghostly apparitions give visual form to our innate curiosity about what exists beyond our earthly realm.
Ghosts have appeared across cultures and eras through myths, legends, literature and art because they speak to enduring questions at the core of the human experience. What happens after death? Do spirits linger among us? Can we communicate with those who have passed? Does an afterlife exist? Artistic depictions of ghosts give us a way to visually embody and imagine these timeless metaphysical questions.
So this Halloween, appreciate painters through the centuries who have indulged that irresistible human impulse - to conjure and depict what may dwell beyond the veil of our world. As you gaze at these spectral figures, reflect on the enduring mysteries of existence itself. But you may still want to keep the hallway lights on at night, just in case. The spirits know this is their season to roam unrestrained. Ghosts let us ponder the great beyond, the world of spirits, and our deepest fears. Just don't look behind you right now...