That's My Lady

or: Cool as Aquamarine

That's My Lady

by

String Driven Thing

The Poet and the Muse

Inspired By(?) #6 or: Pyle inspired by …Moreau? …Delaunay?  …Chassériau?  …Leighton? …Hokusai‽

Howard Pyle

A young man (a poet?) embracing his elusive muse (personified by a mermaid) for the final time?

"And when your fingers find her, she drowns you in her body, 

Carving deep blue ripples in the tissues of your mind." ~ Cream, Tales Of Brave Ulysses

Howard Pyle - The Mermaid, 1910

Gustave Moreau

Hesiod (a poet) and the muse, no mermaid but a Phrygian cap!

Gustave Moreau - Hésiode et la Muse, 1857

See also ~ https://picasaweb.google.com/104843871720362761374/GustaveMoreau18261898

Phrygian cap

Jules-Elie Delaunay

A poet but no muse.

Sappho Kissing Her Lyre by Jules-Elie Delaunay

Théodore Chassériau

A poet and his muse, but again not a mermaid.

Hero et Leandre, also known as Le Poete et la Sirene, 1841

See also ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_and_Daphne

Théodore Chassériau, Apollo and Daphne

Frederic Leighton

A mermaid and a fisherman, hmm… who is perhaps also a poet?

The Mermaid (The Fisherman and the Syren). (From a ballad by Goethe.) (26½ × 18½ in.) R.A.

Shown in 1858 at the Royal Academy, and again in the 1897 retrospective exhibition, was first entitled The Fisherman and Syren, and afterwards The Mermaid; it is a composition of two small full-length figures, a mermaid clasping a fisherman round the neck. The subject is taken from a ballad by Goethe:

"Half drew she him,

Half sunk he in,

And never more was seen."

Hokusai

WHATEVER.

http://www.delart.org/collections/howard_pyle/pyles_inspiration_mermaid.html

From the "Pyrite Age of Illustration"

The Decline of Illustration, by Thomas Craven, from American Mercury Magazine September to December 1927

"For fifteen years illustration enjoyed unprecedented popularity and the income of the artist in many cases exceeded that of the author."

"in an excess of phrenetic greed, soon departed from the decent standards of  the old school, and so debased drawing into the cheapest form of mechanical ingenuity—slippery, sentimental stuff designed for an audience which was, a few years hence, to feed its imagination upon the movies and the radio."

"The prices for heads in water-color, oil and pastel mounted to incredible figures.  …all of them stupidly drawn an offensive to readers of any taste."

"American publishers have been known to encourage authors and to nurse them to fame through several failures, but under no circumstances will they foster anything but the lowest pictorial talent."

"today the bottom has dropped out of the market. The leading American magazines have discarded illustration; most novels are published without pictures; most political cartoons resemble comic strips"

"In the first place, photography. The camera has debauched the appreciation of drawing and provided a swift and inexpensive means of pandering to the growing demand for literal scenes, portraits and naked surfaces."

"With photography I would, of course, include the moving picture and its attendant insanities—the mania for pictorial fodder of all sorts, but always in an unimaginative form—, and the tabloid newspapers, with their displays of domestic crimes and lubricities. The tabloid germ has spread to the baser magazines, some of which are illustrated with old "stills" purchased from the moving picture companies."

file under: Same as it ever was…