Flying Fish

Flying Fish was painted in 1910, the year after Draper completed Ulysses and the Sirens, and continues his exploration of the boundary between the marine world and female mythological figures. The flying fish of the title provide the pretext for imagining nymphs or sea spirits leaping through the surface of the sea, and the subject allowed Draper to paint the female figure in motion through water and air simultaneously — one of his preferred technical challenges. By 1910 the market for large Edwardian classical figure paintings was beginning to contract under pressure from continental modernism, but Draper continued to refine the genre he had made his own. The work belongs to a series of sea-themed mythological subjects that occupied him throughout the first decade of the twentieth century.

The composition balances the upward movement of leaping figures against the flat horizon of open sea. Draper's rendering of water on skin — the way light catches wet surfaces and translucent fabric — is handled with his characteristic technical facility. The colour palette is bright and airy, with high-key blues and whites dominating.