Ulysses and the Sirens

Ulysses and the Sirens, painted in 1891 and now in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, is one of the defining works of Waterhouse's career and one of the most celebrated Victorian mythological paintings. Homer's Odyssey describes how Ulysses (Odysseus) ordered his crew to plug their ears with wax while he was bound to the mast to hear the sirens' song without being able to respond. Waterhouse translates this narrative of constrained desire and predatory female song into a compositional drama of ship, ropes, and a cluster of bird-women sirens perching on the vessel's sides. The sirens in Waterhouse's version follow the older Greek tradition of bird-women rather than the later Renaissance fish-tailed mermaids, a decision that reflects genuine classical scholarship. The work's current home in Australia reflects the Anglophone reach of Victorian Academicism.

The seascape setting and the complex multi-figure composition — multiple sirens, crew members, the bound Ulysses — required careful compositional organisation unusual in Waterhouse's typically single-figure canvases. The ship's wooden structure provides a strong horizontal framework. Sirens are differentiated across the ship's sides in varying postures and degrees of agitation. Sea light and foam are handled with Waterhouse's characteristic broken-colour water technique.