The Sea Maidens (sometimes known as "The Sea Sisters") by Evelyn De Morgan (1850-1919). 1885-86. Oil on canvas. Signed, H 818 x W 1418 mm. Collection: The De Morgan Foundation, but hanging in the Queen's House at Greenwich, below a copy of Franz Xaver Winterhalter's portrait (by Winterhalter's brother, Hermann) of the young Queen Victoria. Source: Lobo, "The Sea Maidens." The Royal Museum kindly allows the use of content for non-commercial research, criticism and review. [Cick on the image to enlarge it.]
When the painting was bought by the Earl of Lovelace, it was seen quite simply as an illustration of these lines from Hans Christian Anderson's well-known tale, "The Little Mermaid": "Once in the night time, her sisters came arm in arm. Sadly they sang as they floated above the water" (Stirling, facing p. 248). Carla Valois Lobo too links it to the tale, as well as finding in it the influence of Edward Burne-Jones and the Pre-Raphaelites.
Looking a little deeper, the work has also been seen as an allegory of certain aspects of its times. in Lobo's reading, for example, it presents "the imagery of sisterhood," and the "transfiguration of the feminine with the divine." But allegories by their very nature are open to various interpretations, and a more recent critic, Clare Pettitt, sees something very different in it: stressing the figures' hybridity, Pettitt argues that it reflects "some of the challenges to form and bodily cohesion produced by the new communications technologies" arriving at the time it was painted (17). Far from being impressed by what Lobo calls a "delicate depiction of sisterhood," Pettitt notes the lack of individuality in the figures, the increasing tenuousness of the linking, and the way the line of mermaids breaks off in the sea at either end. To Pettitt, therefore, the mermaids embody a certain anxiety about our future rather than a strong (and gendered) united front: "It was already possible to imagine in the 1880s that the 'freedom' of distributed consciousness across the wires might produce a vertiginous alienation" (19).
The figures were bound to be similar, because they were all modelled by one person — Evelyn’s maid Jane Hales. But then this was obviously the artist's deliberate choice, so might indeed suggest an intention to comment on impersonality. In tune with Pettitt's view (and diametrically opposed to Lobo's) is the point made in the De Morgan Foundation's entry for the painting, that the mermaids' "cold eyes and inexpressive faces allude to their lack of immortal soul." Circling back to the inspiration of Burne-Jones, and appreciating the sheer aesthetic impact of the composition, it might also be possible to see here a decorative impulse rather than a hidden meaning. — Jacqueline Banerjee
Links to Related Material
- Victorians Decoded: Art and Telegraphy (exhibition review)
- The Impact of Hans Christian Andersen on Victorian Fiction
Bibliography
Lobo, Carla Valois. "'The Sea Maidens': Evelyn de Morgan and the transfiguration of the feminine with the divine." website">Royal Museums Greenwich. Web. 11 March 2025. https://www.rmg.co.uk/stories/blog/sea-maidens-evelyn-de-morgan-transfiguration-feminine-divine
Pettitt, Clare. "The Abstracted Body and the Telegraphic Touch." Nineteenth-Century Literature in Transition: The 1880. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 15-33.
Stirling, Anna Maria Wilhelmina. William De Morgan and His Wife. New York: Holt, 1922. Internet Archive, from a copy in the Getty Research Institute. Web. 11 March 2025.
Created 19 March 2025