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Lot Essay
This exciting rediscovery is a fine example of Draper's fascination with the alluring and mystical subject of mermaids or water nymphs, seen in works such as The Sea Maiden (sold in these Rooms, 16 June 2010, lot 168), Ulysses and the Sirens (1910, Leeds Art Gallery) and his much-celebrated The Lament for Icarus (1898, Tate), in which three beautiful mermaids embrace the fallen body of the hubristic hero who flew too close to the sun.
Despite the maiden not featuring a fish tail, she clearly belongs to the genre of mermaid subjects that figures so prominently in Victorian art. Burne-Jones, for example, had treated the theme several times in the 1880s, inspired by the proximity of the sea at Rottingdean, his house on the Sussex coast. The most important example was The Depths of the Sea (private collection), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886, which shows a mermaid, an enigmatic smile on her lips, dragging a mariner down to her watery lair. Exhibited at the Royal Academy the same year as Draper’s painting was Poynter’s erotic masterpiece Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1902, Hermitage Museum, Vermont. A larger version was painted in 1903, private collection). Examples following Draper's own early handling of the subject include those by Waterhouse, including his RA diploma picture of 1900 and a contemporary work, The Siren, in which the eponymous temptress, playing her harp, looks on dispassionately as a sailor drowns at her feet.
The painting loosely combines themes from two sources. Firstly the story from ancient Greek mythology in which the sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with Galatea, one of his works, who with Aphrodite’s intervention, miraculously came to life. The story captivated artists and writers of the nineteenth-century as it provided them with subject matter infused with mystery, romance and classicism. Artists as diverse as Burne-Jones, Gérôme, Normand and Rodin, and authors such as Shaw, Tennyson, and Browning, all created their own individual interpretations on the theme. In Draper’s painting he has inverted the story and reversed the sexes, and it is the beautiful nymph who has risen from the depths and serves as the protagonist, her hair crowned with a wreath of seaweed and coral, as she offers a shell filled with pearls in supplication to the static figurehead carved into the wooden prow of the ship.
The painting is also suggestive of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, The Little Mermaid, published in April 1837, in which a mermaid falls in love with a prince and is willing to give up her life in the ocean to gain a human soul and follow her love onto land. Tragically, as in Draper’s interpretation, the relationship cannot be fulfilled and the beautiful hero and heroine are destined to remain apart.
Born in London in 1864, Draper studied at the St John's Wood Art School before entering the Royal Academy Schools at the age of twenty. There he was taught by all the leading Academicians of the day and evidently won the respect of the President, Sir Frederic Leighton, who did much to guide his early progress. Five years later he won the Gold Medal and a travelling scholarship, which enabled him to pursue his studies in the Académie Julian in Paris and, more independently, in Rome. He exhibited at the RA from 1887, his subject pictures often being inspired by the English poets and having a marked tendency to marine and nautical themes.
The frame was made by Harry Walter Taylor of The Old Golden Palette in Bayswater, and would have been designed by Draper himself in keeping with the painting’s maritime theme. Surrounded by a rope motif, it is filled with intertwined serpents and strapwork, which echo the Baroque carving on the ship, and adds a greater sense of movement to the whole composition.
In 1903 Draper sent the painting as part of a large consignment from Britain to Pietersmaritzburg in South Africa where it became part of the collection of the newly-formed Tatham Art Gallery, created and funded by Mrs Ada Tatham. In 1887 she had married Frederick Spence Tatham, a barrister, soldier and politician, and, as well as helping her husband with his election campaigns, she also served on numerous committees and societies. She held a strong interest in history and art, with a particular interest in Victorian Britain and Empire, and after raising funds through donations from the public and the City Council, she was able to purchase paintings during a visit to Britain in 1903, aided by introductions to artists by Sir William Blake-Richmond, her husband's cousin. Alongside this painting by Draper, Tatham purchased works by Lucy Kemp-Welch, John Frederick Bacon, Evelyn de Morgan, Joseph Farquharson, and through Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy, secured a loan collection of one hundred paintings by British artists. However in November 1961 it became apparent that the Gallery was in a state of disrepair, and after a lengthy evaluation of the whole collection, a group of over one hundred works were sold including the present painting. (For further information see B. Bell, One hundred years: The fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Tatham Art Gallery collection, Natalia 33, 2003).
At the sale in Johannesburg in November 1964 the painting was purchased by a American, Vice-Admiral George Marker Wauchope who, after World War II, became President of Farrell Lines, a New York-based shipping company. Throughout his life he travelled extensively, and was a passionate sailor, competing in the Bermuda race and Sidney Hobart race.
We are grateful to Brendan Bell, Director of the Tatham Art Gallery, for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.
Despite the maiden not featuring a fish tail, she clearly belongs to the genre of mermaid subjects that figures so prominently in Victorian art. Burne-Jones, for example, had treated the theme several times in the 1880s, inspired by the proximity of the sea at Rottingdean, his house on the Sussex coast. The most important example was The Depths of the Sea (private collection), exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1886, which shows a mermaid, an enigmatic smile on her lips, dragging a mariner down to her watery lair. Exhibited at the Royal Academy the same year as Draper’s painting was Poynter’s erotic masterpiece Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1902, Hermitage Museum, Vermont. A larger version was painted in 1903, private collection). Examples following Draper's own early handling of the subject include those by Waterhouse, including his RA diploma picture of 1900 and a contemporary work, The Siren, in which the eponymous temptress, playing her harp, looks on dispassionately as a sailor drowns at her feet.
The painting loosely combines themes from two sources. Firstly the story from ancient Greek mythology in which the sculptor Pygmalion fell in love with Galatea, one of his works, who with Aphrodite’s intervention, miraculously came to life. The story captivated artists and writers of the nineteenth-century as it provided them with subject matter infused with mystery, romance and classicism. Artists as diverse as Burne-Jones, Gérôme, Normand and Rodin, and authors such as Shaw, Tennyson, and Browning, all created their own individual interpretations on the theme. In Draper’s painting he has inverted the story and reversed the sexes, and it is the beautiful nymph who has risen from the depths and serves as the protagonist, her hair crowned with a wreath of seaweed and coral, as she offers a shell filled with pearls in supplication to the static figurehead carved into the wooden prow of the ship.
The painting is also suggestive of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, The Little Mermaid, published in April 1837, in which a mermaid falls in love with a prince and is willing to give up her life in the ocean to gain a human soul and follow her love onto land. Tragically, as in Draper’s interpretation, the relationship cannot be fulfilled and the beautiful hero and heroine are destined to remain apart.
Born in London in 1864, Draper studied at the St John's Wood Art School before entering the Royal Academy Schools at the age of twenty. There he was taught by all the leading Academicians of the day and evidently won the respect of the President, Sir Frederic Leighton, who did much to guide his early progress. Five years later he won the Gold Medal and a travelling scholarship, which enabled him to pursue his studies in the Académie Julian in Paris and, more independently, in Rome. He exhibited at the RA from 1887, his subject pictures often being inspired by the English poets and having a marked tendency to marine and nautical themes.
The frame was made by Harry Walter Taylor of The Old Golden Palette in Bayswater, and would have been designed by Draper himself in keeping with the painting’s maritime theme. Surrounded by a rope motif, it is filled with intertwined serpents and strapwork, which echo the Baroque carving on the ship, and adds a greater sense of movement to the whole composition.
In 1903 Draper sent the painting as part of a large consignment from Britain to Pietersmaritzburg in South Africa where it became part of the collection of the newly-formed Tatham Art Gallery, created and funded by Mrs Ada Tatham. In 1887 she had married Frederick Spence Tatham, a barrister, soldier and politician, and, as well as helping her husband with his election campaigns, she also served on numerous committees and societies. She held a strong interest in history and art, with a particular interest in Victorian Britain and Empire, and after raising funds through donations from the public and the City Council, she was able to purchase paintings during a visit to Britain in 1903, aided by introductions to artists by Sir William Blake-Richmond, her husband's cousin. Alongside this painting by Draper, Tatham purchased works by Lucy Kemp-Welch, John Frederick Bacon, Evelyn de Morgan, Joseph Farquharson, and through Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy, secured a loan collection of one hundred paintings by British artists. However in November 1961 it became apparent that the Gallery was in a state of disrepair, and after a lengthy evaluation of the whole collection, a group of over one hundred works were sold including the present painting. (For further information see B. Bell, One hundred years: The fortunes (and misfortunes) of the Tatham Art Gallery collection, Natalia 33, 2003).
At the sale in Johannesburg in November 1964 the painting was purchased by a American, Vice-Admiral George Marker Wauchope who, after World War II, became President of Farrell Lines, a New York-based shipping company. Throughout his life he travelled extensively, and was a passionate sailor, competing in the Bermuda race and Sidney Hobart race.
We are grateful to Brendan Bell, Director of the Tatham Art Gallery, for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.