Ulysses and the Sirens

Ulysses and the Sirens, painted in 1910 and held by Leeds Art Gallery, is one of Herbert James Draper's finest mythological canvases, depicting the famous episode from Homer's Odyssey in which Ulysses has himself tied to the mast to hear the Sirens' song without being destroyed by it. Draper was the leading British painter of mythological marine subjects in the Edwardian period, specialising in compositions that combined nude or semi-nude female figures with the sea — a combination that allowed considerable sensual display within the culturally respectable frame of classical mythology. The Sirens in this work are rendered as beautiful women who cling to the ship and reach for Ulysses, their supernatural voices translated into a visual seduction. This version is later than Waterhouse's famous treatment of 1891 and likely engages with it in competitive dialogue, representing Draper's attempt to claim the subject definitively.

Oil on canvas on a large, ambitious scale with Draper's polished academic technique. The composition exploits the drama of the sea — rough water, a strained vessel — as a setting for the encounter. Female figures are rendered with confident academic figure painting, their wet or windblown forms