Sirène

Elisabeth Jerichau-Baumann was born in Warsaw, trained in Germany and married into Danish life, and she returned to the mermaid several times. This one, from 1873, was the last of at least four. She leans against a rock in shallow water, a moonlit sea behind her, and her expression is more sorrowful than seductive. The painter drew on two things close to her: the mermaid on the coat of arms of her native Warsaw, and Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the little mermaid, published in Copenhagen a few decades earlier. The brewer Carl Jacobsen bought the canvas from her in 1877, and it has stayed in his Glyptotek in Copenhagen ever since.