John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), Ulysses and the Sirens (1891), oil on canvas, 100.6 x 201.7 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Wikimedia Commons.

Sirens are mythical woman-like creatures with alluring voices, best-known from their appearance in Homer’s Odyssey, but also featuring in other tales including that of Jason and the Argonauts. Typically their singing lures sailors to their death, and that reputation has led them to represent anything that’s dangerously attractive. Originally they weren’t described in any physical detail, but visual representations soon envisaged them as having the upper bodies of beautiful young women, and the lower bodies and legs of birds, and that has been incorporated and elaborated in later accounts and retelling.

At the end of the year that Odysseus and his crew stayed with the sorceress Circe, she helpfully advised him that he would have to sail past the sirens, two to five creatures who lured men to their death with their singing. In preparation, Odysseus got his sailors to plug their ears with beeswax before they reached the sirens, so they couldn’t hear their song, and to bind him to the mast. He gave them strict instructions that under no circumstances, no matter what he said at the time, were they to loosen his bonds, as he would be listening to the sirens’ song.

As the group reached the sirens, Odysseus told his men to release him, but instead they bound him even more closely to the mast. Once they had passed safely from earshot of the sirens, Odysseus used his facial expression to inform his men, who then released him, and they sailed on.

William Etty (1787–1849), The Sirens and Ulysses (c 1837), oil on canvas, 297 x 442.5 cm, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England. Wikimedia Commons.

William Etty’s The Sirens and Ulysses from about 1837 is one of the pioneering accounts in paint of this story from the Odyssey. His three naked sirens are all woman, one playing a lyre, another holding double pipes aloft, all three doing their best to draw the sailors from Odysseus’ ship to a shore where there are the remains of earlier victims.

Edward Poynter (1836–1919), The Siren (c 1864), oil on canvas, dimensions not known, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

Edward Poynter’s The Siren from about 1864 has Aesthetic overtones in the lyre she is playing.

Arnold Böcklin (1827–1901), Sirens (1875), tempera on canvas, 46 × 31 cm, Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. Wikimedia Commons.

Arnold Böcklin takes an unusual approach of almost dereferencing Odysseus in his painting of Sirens from 1875, although there is an approaching vessel that could be his. The two sirens filling the canvas are very human down to the waist, below which they resemble birds. One sits facing us, clearly in full voice, and highly alluring in looks. The other, her back towards us, is playing an aulos and looks rather obese, to the point of almost being comical, her right breast laid upon a flat-topped rock. At their feet are three human skulls and other bones to indicate their graver intentions.

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), The Sirens (1882), watercolor and gouache, brown ink, and black chalk on cream wove paper, 32.8 x 20.9 cm, Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum (Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop), Cambridge, MA. Courtesy of Harvard Art Museums.

Gustave Moreau’s The Sirens (1882) shows them as beautiful figures in a static scene, with a saturnine setting sun. There is, though, a lone sail on the horizon that hasn’t yet attracted their attention. Their lower legs turn into the writhing coils of sea serpents.

Gustave Moreau (1826–1898), The Sirens (c 1885), oil on canvas, 89 x 118 cm, Musée National Gustave-Moreau, Paris. Wikimedia Commons.

Moreau’s slightly later group portrait of The Sirens from about 1885 is more complete, with Odysseus sailing past, but its three figures are clearly all woman and no bird.

Hans Thoma (1839–1924), Eight Dancing Women with Bird Bodies (1886), oil on panel, 38 × 58.5 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Eight Dancing Women with Bird Bodies (1886) is one of Hans Thoma’s unusual mythological paintings. The best-known women with bird bodies were the sirens, who range in number from two to five. In another painting showing the sirens trying to lure a passing ship, Thoma paints similar figures, suggesting these are intended to be sirens.

John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), Ulysses and the Sirens (1891), oil on canvas, 100.6 x 201.7 cm, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. Wikimedia Commons.

John William Waterhouse’s Ulysses and the Sirens (1891) is closer to the Homeric account, although he provides a total of seven sirens, shown as large eagle-like birds of prey with only the head and neck of beautiful women. He has added bandage wrappings around the head of each sailor to make it clear that their ears are stopped from hearing sound, a visual device that links neatly with the text. His sirens are clearly singing, particularly the one closest to the viewer, who is challenging the hearing protection of one of the sailors. Another sailor, at the stern of the ship (left of the painting), is seen clutching his ears.

John William Waterhouse (1849–1917), The Siren (1900), oil on canvas, 81 x 53 cm, location not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Almost a decade later, Waterhouse painted this non-narrative portrait of The Siren (1900).

Henrietta Rae (1859–1928), The Sirens (1903), oil on canvas, 114.3 × 254 cm, Private collection. Wikimedia Commons.

The Sirens (1903) marked Henrietta Rae’s return to painting narrative works featuring classical nudes. Odysseus’ ship is in the distance, as three beautiful sirens use their aulos and lyre to lure its occupants.

Late mythology suggests an unpleasant end for these sirens: Hera challenged them to a singing contest against the Muses. When the latter won, the penalty they exacted of the sirens was to have all their feathers plucked out to turn into crowns. As a result of that disgrace, the sirens turned white, fell into the sea, and formed the islands including modern Souda, on the north-west coast of Crete in the Mediterranean.

Sirens have steadily spread their presence into other paintings, particularly during the twentieth century.

Georg Janny (1864–1935), Sirens Bathing by the Sea (1922), gouache on cardboard, further details not known. Wikimedia Commons.

Georg Janny’s fantasy painting of Sirens Bathing by the Sea from 1922 is throughly other-worldly, and there’s no trace of their bird legs.

Paul Nash (1892–1946), Nest of the Siren (1930), oil on canvas, 77 x 51.2 cm, HM Treasury, London, England. The Athenaeum.

More cryptic is Paul Nash’s Surrealist Nest of the Siren (1930), which brings together the incongruous, and hardly refers to Homer’s story. The painting is framed by brightly-painted walls with pillared decorations, perhaps ornate wainscot panelling. In the middle of these is what might be a painting, but also seems to be a three-dimensional plant trough containing sinuous shrubs. In the middle of those is a small nest, like an acorn cup.

Standing in front of this is a structure resembling a weather-vane, mounted on a turned wooden shaft. At the weather end of the vane is the faceless figure of a siren; the leeward end appears purely decorative. Three red rods appear to have detached themselves from the walling, two protruding from the plant trough, the third resting on the floor.

They even manage to sneak symbolically into other classical stories.

Anne-Louis Girodet de Roucy-Trioson (1767-1824), The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione (c 1800), pen and brown and black ink, point of brush and brown and gray wash, with black chalk and graphite, heightened with white gouache on cream wove paper, 28.5 x 21.8 cm, Cleveland Museum of Art (Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund), Cleveland, OH. Courtesy of Cleveland Museum of Art.

In Girodet’s ink and chalk drawing of The Meeting of Orestes and Hermione (c 1800), Hermione is seen at the right, her arms folded, looking coy as Orestes approaches her. The second woman, with Orestes, is presumably Hermione’s maid. This is one of a series of illustrations made by Girodet to accompany Racine’s play, and has subtleties you might expect from a great narrative artist. Visible in the gap between the figures is a table-leg in the form not of a Fury foretelling Orestes’ fate, but of a siren, implying that Hermione is luring Orestes to her. Hermione, for all her apparent coyness, has let the right shoulder-strap of her robe slip, in her enticement of Orestes. She has assumed the role of femme fatale, as portrayed by Euripides and Racine.

In more recent literature, sirens appear in the less-known second part of Goethe’s play Faust.

Margret Hofheinz-Döring (1910–1994), With the Sirens (1962), pastel, 34 x 25 cm, Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen. Image by Peter Mauch, courtesy of Margret Hofheinz-Döring/ Galerie Brigitte Mauch Göppingen, via Wikimedia Commons.

Margret Hofheinz-Döring is one of the few artists who has painted from this second part. With the Sirens from 1962 is her pastel painting showing the sirens among rocky inlets of the Aegean Sea, a sub-scene concluding the second act.