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Home>Stories>Hidden Halloween Treasures in the National Gallery’s Collection

Did you know only 2 percent of our collection is on view at any given time?

This Halloween, we’ve pulled out some of our spookiest artworks, from the ghoulish to the darkly funny to the outright bizarre.

Discover terrifying treasures from Hieronymous Bosch, William Blake, Edvard Munch, and Andy Warhol—plus lesser-known artists who brilliantly captured ghosts, witches, vampires, and monsters. These works are sure to send shivers down your spine.

Andy Warhol, Halloween, 1949

Antonio Reynoso, El Fantasma (Ghost), 1944

Nathan Lerner, Eye and Barbed Wire, 1939

Deborah Luster, Denise Howard, St. Gabriel, Louisiana, October 27, 2000

Printed in black on cream-white paper, a person standing on a bridge holds both hands to their oval-shaped head in this stylized lithograph. The person’s waifish body creates an S-shape, and their hollow eyes look slightly off to the left. The face has exaggeratedly high cheekbones, and the mouth is open in a tall oval. The bridge stretches from the bottom right corner of the print to the middle of the left edge of the sheet. Two black silhouettes represent people at the far end of the bridge. A curving form in the distance suggests a body of water with a couple of masted ships near the coastline. The rest of the landscape is carved with woodgrain-like, closely spaced, organic lines, and waves surge across the sky. A printed inscription in the margin below the image reads “Geschrei” and a pencil inscription in the lower right corner reads, “Edw Munch No 21.”

Edvard Munch, Geschrei (The Scream), 1895

Various Artists, Bogeyman Comics #3 (red cover), Published 1970

Leopoldo Méndez, The Symphonic Concert of Skeletons, 1943

Hans Lützelburger after Hans Holbein the Younger, Skeletons Making Music, c. 1526, download image

Allen Ginsberg, The Ballad of the Skeletons, 1996

Trick or Treat Reading List

Explore spooky selections from the National Gallery of Art Library.

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Max Slevogt, Witches' Dance, 1903

Matsumi Kanemitsu, Monday's Witch, 1970

Albrecht Dürer, Witch Riding on a Goat, c. 1500/1501, download image

Graham Sutherland, Ram's Head (with rocks and skeletons), 1968

Hyman Bloom, Fish Skeletons, c. 1956

A nude, muscular man with pale mauve-pink skin and seven human heads straddles a blue-skinned creature with seven beast-like heads in this vertical ink and watercolor illustration. The body of the Great Red Dragon, the creature with mauve skin, and his outstretched, webbed wings nearly fill the composition. The wings are spotted with silver, five-pointed stars. Rams’ horns scroll from his central head and some of the smaller heads to each side. Two of the outer heads have horns like unicorns but the faces are obscured by others in front. He stands with knees slightly bent and feet widely planted on choppy waters. His arms are thrust straight by his sides so the palms face down and the fingers flare outward. Fins jut out from next to his right knee and ankle, to our left. The second creature, the Beast from the Sea, is between the Great Red Dragon’s legs, sunk up to the chest in the white-crested water. The Beast looks up at the Great Red Dragon with all seven, equally sized heads. These heads also have straight or curling horns but exaggerated, thick lips and feline-like noses. The Beast raises both arms so one is in front of one of the Great Red Dragon’s legs and the other is behind. The Beast holds up a flaming sword with the right hand, to our left, and a flaming object, perhaps a scepter or torch, in the other hand. The background behind the pair is inky black. The artist signed the lower right, “WB inv.”

William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea, c. 1805, download image

A winged woman, painted with tones of pale and butter yellow, kneels on a rock and looks up at a winged, horned creature with steel-gray skin and a curling tail flying above her in this vertical, graphite and watercolor work on paper. The woman, her body facing us, takes up most of the bottom half of the composition, and the winged creature the top half. The woman’s long blond hair flies up around her upturned face like stylized rays of sunlight. Her arms are spread wide, wrists flexed so her palms face out, and her pale, apricot-colored wings curve up over her shoulders and tuck behind her in a heart shape. She rests on a crescent moon with the tips pointing upward, which, in turn, rests on a gray, squared rock. Mirroring her pose but flying so his body faces downward as his feet point away from us, the creature above the woman has a muscular, humanoid physique. His long tail curls to our left in three loops, and is shaded with pale maroon red. Ram’s horns curve up from inside a golden crown encircling the top of his head, which faces us. Upon closer inspection, several faces, drawn with graphite and filled with nickel-gray watercolor, are connected around the creature's neck and also look down in profile onto the woman. The profiles overlap and some of the heads have moss-green, curling horns. The tips of the flying creature's outstretched fingers and arms nearly touch the sides of the paper and his light, rose-colored bat-like wings extend off both sides and the top of the composition. The background behind the pair is dark gray with white zigzagging lines to the left and right of the woman. Faces also emerge from the ground, looking up from the lower right corner. The artist signed his initials in black paint near the lower left: “WB.”

William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, c. 1805, download image

Edvard Munch, The Vampire (Vampyr), 1895

Luigi Schiavonetti after William Blake, The Skeleton Re-animated, 1808 and 1813, download image

Rosa Bonheur, The Legend of the Wolves, 1890s, download image

Francisco Goya, No te escaparas (You Will Not Escape), published 1799

Francisco Goya, El sueño de la razon produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters), published 1799, download image

Francisco Goya, Buen Viage (Bon Voyage), published 1799, download image

Jacques Gamelin, A Winged Skeleton Holding an Anatomical Drawing, 1779, download image

Painted entirely in shades of white, charcoal, and steel gray, a slim, white, almost ghostly dog makes its way from our left to right with its snout held low, along a sidewalk or rails in this vertical composition. The dog is thinly painted and blurry, as if shown in action, so the details are difficult to make out. The dark, gray space is defined only by three diagonals running from the center of the left edge down into the lower right corner. Within the band made by the lower two diagonals, two parallel sets of curving, parallel lines suggest grates or gutters over storm drains. Seeming unrelated to the rest of the image, three faint, gray, ruled lines radiate upward from a point near the lower-left corner to intersect the lowermost border defining the gutter.

On view: East Building, Upper Level - Gallery 407A
Francis Bacon, Study for a Running Dog, c. 1954

Gertrude Käsebier, The Bat, 1902, download image

A naked man with ghostly white skin sits upright in a canopied bed set in a narrow room in this tall, vertical painting. Wearing a black cap, he looks to our left in profile toward a skeleton who comes through a door along the left edge of the composition. The man gestures at the skeleton with one hand and, with the other, toward a bag of money held up by a small demon next to the bed to our left. The skeleton wears a white shroud and holds an arrow. A winged angel kneels next to the man in the bed, one hand on the man’s shoulder and the other lifted to gesture at a crucifix hanging in the window over the door. A small devil on the canopy above looks down onto the bed. At the foot of the bed, a man wearing a green robe and headdress drops coins into a sack held by another demon. Three more demons crawl about and hide under the chest. Pieces of armor and weapons lie on the ground to the right in front of a stone ledge in the foreground. Two pieces of clothing drape over the ledge to our left.

Hieronymus Bosch, Death and the Miser, c. 1485/1490, download image

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October 27, 2022