Les mélodies de la mer

Les mélodies de la mer (The Melodies of the Sea), painted by Herbert James Draper in 1904, is a marine mythological subject that draws on the ancient tradition of sea-music: the songs of sirens, nereids, and sea-nymphs that were central to classical mythology and literary tradition. The French title indicates the work's orientation toward the European academic tradition and the Symbolist cultural moment that invested the sea with musical and emotional resonance — one thinks of Debussy's La Mer, composed in the same years. Draper had made the marine mythological subject his own specialty following the enormous success of Ulysses and the Sirens (1894), and continued to explore variations on the theme of female figures in or near the sea throughout the first decade of the twentieth century. The combination of aquatic setting, female figures, and musical theme — sea-nymphs singing, playing instruments, or embodying the concept of oceanic melody — allowed Draper to unite his technical strengths in figure painting with the atmospheric qualities of the marine tradition.

Draper combines his mastery of the female figure in aquatic settings with the challenge of suggesting music through visual means — gestures, poses, and expressions that imply song or the rapt attention of listening figures contribute to the musical theme.