All wet - selected images of "aquatic life"

 

Meeresstille (Calm Sea), by Arnold Böcklin, 1886-7.

Ningyo-no-zu-Bunka*, 1805.

La Sirena - Abisso Verde (Siren - Green Abyss), by Giulio Aristide Sartorio, 1893.

Meerjungfrauen (Mermaids), Gustav Klimt, 1899.

Meerweibchen (Mermaid), by Franz von Stuck, 1891.

Study for the above.

La Sirène (Siren), by Odilon Redon, circa 1900.

From the Ramakien murals in the Grand Palace, Bangkok, Thailand, 1783.

The Merman and the Maid, by James Jebusa Shannon, before November 1897.

Sadko, or Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom, by Ilya Repin, 1876.

Study for the above, 1875.

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* This woodblock-printed flier publicized the appearance of a ningyo - the Japanese translates to "human fish" and is not gender specific - which was caught in what is now Toyama Bay during the fifth month of Bunka 2 (1805). According to the text of the flier, this ningyo was a creature with the head of a long-haired young woman, a pair of golden horns, a red belly, three eyes on each side of its torso, a carp-like tail, and purportedly measured thirty-five feet long. The flier reports that the people grew frightened and destroyed it with "450 rifles." Yet it also states that "A person who views this fish once will enjoy great longevity, avoid bad turns of events and disasters, and gain luck and virtue". (Yeah, but what about the nightmares...?)

A frenzy of youth - a diptych by Giulio Aristide Sartorio, Gallerie d’Italia - Piazza Scala, Milan

 

Risveglio (“Reawakening”), tempera on canvas, 1923.

 Sagra (“Rite”), tempera on canvas, 1923.

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Risveglio - details.

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 Sagra - details.

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Giulio Aristide Sartorio (11 February 1860, Rome - 3 October 1932, Rome), Italian painter, teacher and independent film producer and director. The son and nephew of artists, he studied painting at the Accademia di San Luca, Rome; by the time he was twenty, he had set up his own studio. He formed friendships with Gabriele D’Annunzio and fellow artists like Nino Costa, Edoardo Scarfoglio, and Francesco Paolo Michetti. He won a gold medal at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1889 and met the Pre-Raphaelites in England in 1893. At the invitation of the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, he taught painting at the Weimar Academy from 1896 to 1900. And the following year he married the daughter of a Frankfurt banker, Julie Bonn. The couple soon moved into a lavish mansion in Rome, but the marriage was annulled after only four years. (Apparently, the artist then re-designed the house entirely, both interior and exterior.) The beginning of the twentieth century was the period of his greatest renown and productivity. He had participated in the first Venice Biennale in 1895 and continued exhibiting there until the seventeenth in 1930. During World War I, he painted several works related to the war but, a volunteer in the Army, he was wounded and interned by the enemy. At the end of the war, he married again. His new wife, Marga Sevilla, also appeared in his first film, Il mistero di Galatea (1918). He made two other films, Il Sacco di Roma (1920), and San Giorgio (1921). He also travelled extensively in the Middle East, Japan, and Latin America during the 1920s, and became a member of the Italian Royal Academy.