The Kelpie by Herbert Draper

The Kelpie (1913)

Here is a watery maiden by Herbert Draper (1864-1920). Kelpies were spirits who haunted rivers and lakes and would prey on sailors and other travellers. Draper's Kelpie does have something of the sinister about her, although the picture was not well received when it was exhibited; critics thinking that the girl's figure was "too modern" for a mythological subject.  Kelpies were creatures of northern myth and her background setting reflects this. Draper was fascinated, as were other late Victorian artists, with portraying beautiful but evil women and this figure joins his sirens and snake women as another metaphor for the destructiveness of women's sexuality.  The fact that her toes are dipped in the water symbolises the fact that she has lost her virginity.  No innocent maiden, therefore, but a dangerous sexual predator. Draper was an expert at combining source material from different places and fusing them together to provide a realistic and convincing looking whole. In the case of The Kelpie the source material appears to be some photographs he took of a stream in Scotland, together with some detailed pencil studies he made in Savoie. The rendering of the transparently clear water in the foreground of this picture is nothing short of miraculous. 

Sleeping Bacchante by Károly Lotz

Sleeping Bacchante (circa 1885)

This painting is by Hungarian painter Károly Lotz (1833-1904).  The Legatus first saw one of his sensual nudes in the Hungarian National Gallery in Budapest and was so taken with it I bought a very nice reproduction of it, printed on canvas, which the Old Bat got framed for me when I returned.  Lotz studied in Vienna and did most of his nudes early in his career, before shifting focus to frescos.  Many of the major public buildings in Budapest, such as the parliament, the supreme court and the opera house have frescoes by him.  The depiction of Bacchantes always gave nineteenth century artists a good excuse to depict enticingly sprawled women under a classical cloak of acceptability.  This is one of a series of similar paintings he did in the mid eighteen eighties.

Ariadne asleep on the island of Naxos by John Vanderlyn

Ariadne asleep on the island of Naxos (1815) is by the American artist, John Vanderlyn.  Vanderlyn, a New Yorker, was the first American artist to study in Paris and the first to have a painting accepted by the Paris Salon.  This was really the first major nude by an  American painter.  Needless to say, when it was first displayed in America in 1815, its sensual approach caused controversy and as late as the 1890s, when it was firmly esconced in the Pennsylvania Academy's collection, there were protests against its "flagrant indelicacy" and calls for it to be removed from display.  The Legatus saw this painting in the Pennsylvania Academy on a visit to Philadelphia (a city with a fine artistic tradition) a few years ago.