Childe Hassam - The Lorelei - Walters 37310

During an 1886-89 stay in Paris, this Boston painter experimented with working in oils outdoors. He gradually abandoned the dark-toned palette of the Barbizon masters for the brighter colors of the French Impressionists. Hassam named this study of a nude model, painted as if posed on a cliff, after the siren in the German poet Heinrich Heine's "Die Lorelei" (1827). In the poem, the Lorelei, a water spirit dwelling in the treacherous rocks along the Rhine River, lures ships to their destruction with her tantalizing singing:
Night falls as I linger, dreaming,

And calmly flows the Rhine;

The Peaks of the mountains gleaming

In the golden sunset shine.

A wondrous lovely maiden

Sits high in glory there;

Her robe with gems is laden,

And she combs out her golden hair.