Lamia

Lamia, painted by Herbert James Draper in 1910, depicts the figure from John Keats's 1820 narrative poem — a serpent-woman who transforms herself into a beautiful human being to pursue the love of the young Corinthian Lycius, only to be unmasked at their wedding feast by the philosopher Apollonius. Draper had a deep and sustained engagement with classical mythology, and Lamia was a subject that appealed to the late Victorian and Edwardian fascination with the dangerous, seductive woman — the femme fatale figure who simultaneously attracted and destroyed. Keats's poem had been a touchstone of the Pre-Raphaelite movement and continued to inspire painters into the Edwardian period, when Draper was one of its most accomplished interpreters. By 1910 Draper had already painted many of his most celebrated mythological works — The Lament for Icarus (1898), The Sea Maiden, Ulysses and the Sirens — and his command of the female nude in mythological settings was at its most assured. The Lamia figure allowed Draper to explore the ambiguous boundary between human and serpentine, beauty and danger, in a figure who is both victim and predator.

Draper's handling of the Lamia figure would balance the woman's beauty with subtle serpentine qualities — sinuous pose, scaled or reptilian skin transitions — that signal her dual nature. His mastery of the nude figure in complex poses is central to the work's success.