Ulisses e as sereias

Draper finished this in 1909, near the end of the long British taste for grand mythological pictures, at the very moment younger painters in Paris were breaking art down into flat planes and calling it new. He reached instead for Homer. Ulysses has had himself lashed to the mast so he can hear the Sirens' song and survive it, while his crew row on with wax stopping their ears. In the poem the Sirens are monsters singing from a meadow, but Draper turns them into beautiful sea creatures climbing wet over the side of the ship, shifting the danger from their voices to their bodies. The gallery in Hull bought the canvas straight from him the following year for 600 pounds.