Women at the Spring (The Danaids)

In Greek myth the Danaids were the daughters of King Danaus who, all but one, killed their husbands on their wedding night, and were condemned in the underworld to carry water forever in jars that could never be filled. The painting's second title borrows their name. What Sérusier shows is a file of women in long violet dresses carrying orange jars down a winding path to a pool. One bends to dip her jar, and the water spreads in rings. Tree trunks stand against yellow light at the top of the panel, and the pool doubles them upside down. He painted it in 1899 in distemper, a matt, glue-based paint suited to walls, as one of several panels for the country house near Alençon of his fellow Nabi, the sculptor Georges Lacombe, and gave it to him. The Musée d'Orsay bought it at auction in 2016.