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This is likely to be an early painting: Pickersgill was most influenced by William Etty and his nude paintings when he was in his twenties. Etty's biographer Leonard Robinson explains that by the 1850s Pickersgill "responded to the decline in demand [for such paintings] and moved to portraits, draped history subjects and semi—mythological figures," echoing Alison Smith's earlier findings (see Smith 90). Robinson adds that the Athenaeum had criticised his "Ettyian" work in its issue of 3rd July 1852, suggesting that it was too much on the "academical model" (qtd. in Robinson 436, and previously in Smith 95). It was just too similar in kind, and perhaps in its suggestiveness, to the stage fashion for tableaux vivants. "The tide was turning as now the religious moralists were actively campaigning against the nude in art and the use of models" (Robinson 436).

However, this is a delicate composition, even if not very convincing (after all, the sirens were mythological creatures) and the little boat in the distance reminds us of the purpose of these alluring poses, to attract the unwary to the island, where they could be entrapped and devoured. In that respect this is not really a "fancy" piece, but one bordering on nightmare. Other artists have brought out that aspect of the sirens much more fully.

Related Material

• Women as Vampires, Harpies, Sirens, Mermaids
• Ulysses and the Sirens, by J. W. Waterhouse
• Ulysses and the Sirens, by Herbert James Draper

Bibliography

Robinson, Leonard. William Etty: The life and Art. Jefferson, N. Carolina, and London: MacFarlane & Co., 2007.

Smith, Alison. The Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality, and Art. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 199,.

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F. R.
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Created 15 March 2019