DOI Heft:
No. 18 (September, 1894)
DOI Artikel:The sea maiden: a painting by Herbert J. Draper
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17190#0180
The Sea-Maiden
HE SEA MAIDEN : A PAINTING
BY HERBERT J. DRAPER.
One of the most notable pictures in
this year's Exhibition of the Royal
Academy was unquestionably No. 370, The Sea
Maiden, by Herbert J. Draper; which, although
painted by an outsider, was given a place of
honour on the line of Gallery V. Its motto being
the italicised lines in the speech of Chastelard,
which occurs in the first scene of act iii. of
Swinburne's poem :
" Have you never read in French books the song
Called the Duke's Song, some boy made ages back ;
A song of drag-nets hauled across thwart seas
And plucked up with rent sides, and caught therein
A strange haired woman with sad singing lips,
Cold in the cheek, like any stray of sea
And sweet to touch ? so that men seeing her face,
And how she sighed out little Ahs ! of pain,
And soft cries sobbing sideways from her mouth,
Fell in hot love, and having lain with her,
Died soon ?"
As by the artist's permission we are enabled to
reproduce photographs not merely from the picture
itself, but from two of the studies for it, detailed
description of the work is needless.
Nor is it needful to dwell on the months of
elaborate study for the picture; the hunt for typical
heads, the building up of models, for the ship and
various parts of the properties, the studies of surf
and sea, and the slight changes made during the
progress of the work. Still less is it obligatory
to record Mr. Draper's student record, brilliant
although it was, including the R.A. Prize for the
decoration of a portion of a public building in 1887,
and the Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship in
1889. The design which took the prize in 1887,
was a composition, Spring, afterwards carried out
in fresco, 18 ft. by 7 ft., on the wall of the Nurses'
Refectory of Guy's Hospital.
Not merely is The Sea Maiden full of intrinsic
interest, but it seems to mark definitely the
new movement which is in the air at present—the
return to "subjects" and to "colour" for its own
from a study on brown paper
III. No. 18.—September, 1894.
by herbert j. draper
163
HE SEA MAIDEN : A PAINTING
BY HERBERT J. DRAPER.
One of the most notable pictures in
this year's Exhibition of the Royal
Academy was unquestionably No. 370, The Sea
Maiden, by Herbert J. Draper; which, although
painted by an outsider, was given a place of
honour on the line of Gallery V. Its motto being
the italicised lines in the speech of Chastelard,
which occurs in the first scene of act iii. of
Swinburne's poem :
" Have you never read in French books the song
Called the Duke's Song, some boy made ages back ;
A song of drag-nets hauled across thwart seas
And plucked up with rent sides, and caught therein
A strange haired woman with sad singing lips,
Cold in the cheek, like any stray of sea
And sweet to touch ? so that men seeing her face,
And how she sighed out little Ahs ! of pain,
And soft cries sobbing sideways from her mouth,
Fell in hot love, and having lain with her,
Died soon ?"
As by the artist's permission we are enabled to
reproduce photographs not merely from the picture
itself, but from two of the studies for it, detailed
description of the work is needless.
Nor is it needful to dwell on the months of
elaborate study for the picture; the hunt for typical
heads, the building up of models, for the ship and
various parts of the properties, the studies of surf
and sea, and the slight changes made during the
progress of the work. Still less is it obligatory
to record Mr. Draper's student record, brilliant
although it was, including the R.A. Prize for the
decoration of a portion of a public building in 1887,
and the Gold Medal and Travelling Studentship in
1889. The design which took the prize in 1887,
was a composition, Spring, afterwards carried out
in fresco, 18 ft. by 7 ft., on the wall of the Nurses'
Refectory of Guy's Hospital.
Not merely is The Sea Maiden full of intrinsic
interest, but it seems to mark definitely the
new movement which is in the air at present—the
return to "subjects" and to "colour" for its own
from a study on brown paper
III. No. 18.—September, 1894.
by herbert j. draper
163