How you can use this image
This image can be used for non-commercial research or private study purposes, and other UK exceptions to copyright permitted to users based in the United Kingdom under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, as amended and revised. Any other type of use will need to be cleared with the rights holder(s).
Review the copyright credit lines that are located underneath the image, as these indicate who manages the copyright (©) within the artwork, and the photographic rights within the image.
The collection that owns the artwork may have more information on their own website about permitted uses and image licensing options.
Review our guidance pages which explain how you can reuse images, how to credit an image and how to find images in the public domain or with a Creative Commons licence available.
Notes
Add or edit a note on this artwork that only you can see. You can find notes again by going to the ‘Notes’ section of your account.
Frederic Leighton is the only artist to have been elevated to the peerage. At the early age of 48 he became president of the Royal Academy and a pillar of the Victorian art establishment and the classical school. This early work both illustrated and was inspired by a poem by Goethe, which tells the story of a mermaid who rises from the waters to complain to a fisherman that he is enticing her children to death. Gradually the mermaid's own beauty lures the fisherman into the water and to oblivion. A contemporary critic noted the 'irresistible seductiveness' of the mermaid but he observed also that this 'young artist has plainly drunk long and eagerly at the fount of beauty that assuaged the thirst of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael'. It was in exactly that spirit that Leighton was to be so much admired.
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Bristol
Title
The Fisherman and the Syren
Date
1856–1858
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 66.4 x W 48.9 cm
Accession number
K1401
Acquisition method
gift from the Honourable Mrs Charles Lyell, 1938
Work type
Painting
Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Queens Road, Bristol, Bristol BS8 1RL England
-
The Arts of Industry as Applied to Peace Victoria and Albert Museum -
Head of an Elderly Arab Victoria and Albert Museum -
The Return of Persephone Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds Museums and Galleries -
The Sluggard Victoria Gallery & Museum -
Giovanni Cimabue (1240–1302) Victoria and Albert Museum -
Richard and Isobel Burton's House in Damascus Orleans House Gallery -
The Arts of Industry as Applied to War Victoria and Albert Museum - 298 more
