“The Sirens. Maurice Greiffenhagen, RWS (1862-1931), Photographic Reproduction of painting exhibited at the 1919 Royal Academy, Source The International Studio considered The Sirens one of the dozen notable pictures at the year’s RA. Click on image to enlarge it
Comparing this work of 1919 to the artist’s Annunciation two decades earlier one sees an obvious movement from a late-Pre-Raphaelite eroticized religious subject to twentieth-century style and subject: the flattened space with waves and a pre-nineteenth-century sailing ship provide the (shallow) background for the three sirens, who embody very un-Victorian body types, and the middle one smiling evilly at the viewer could come from Ensor or other European symbolists and decadents. — George P. Landow
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Bibliography
“The Royal Academy Exhibition 1919.” International Studio. 68 (1919): 3-14. Hathi Digital Library Trust internet version of a copy in the Cornell University Library. Web. 14 October 2017.
Last modified 14 October 2017