Nymphs

A cluster of sea nymphs gathers on the rocks where the water meets the shore, some perched on the stones, others still half in the waves. Look at the creatures rising from the sea beside them, with their wide toothy mouths breaking the surface. These are the sea monsters or dolphins the nymphs seem to be playing with or taming, a reminder that these mythological water spirits belonged to the ocean and everything in it.

Adolphe La Lyre was a French painter working in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and this piece fits squarely into the academic tradition of his time, when mythological subjects gave artists a respectable excuse to paint the nude figure. The scene is built around that contrast between the pale bodies of the women and the dark wet rocks and green surf around them. The woman standing at the center, with her long reddish hair catching the light, anchors the whole composition and draws your eye first.

It is a competent example of a popular genre rather than a groundbreaking work, the sort of large decorative canvas that filled the salons of the period. The seabirds in the distance and the stretch of open water on the right give the crowded left side some room to breathe, and the whole thing has the polished, slightly theatrical feel that audiences of the day enjoyed.