The Mermaids

The Mermaids (also known as Drowned Maidens; Russian: Русалки) is an 1871 oil-on-canvas by the Russian artist Ivan Kramskoi.

It depicts nineteen rusalki, who, according to Slavic mythology, were river or lake spirits who appeared at night in the form of young women. Some versions of the myths describe them as spirits who had died unbaptised or unmarried, or had drowned themselves following an unrequited love. They would emerge from the water at night to sing and dance. They fulfilled a similar folkloric role to sirens; often enchanting young men before luring them to their deaths at the bottom of the water.

The painting is held in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Description

The painting is set at night and is almost entirely without colour. The women occupy the centre mid-ground of the painting and are lit from high above the left hand of the canvas, presumably by the moon. The source of light throws shadow inconsistently.

Most of the women are huddled together in a row, while some are at the edge of the bank or alone to the right seemingly lost in their own thoughts. In the left foreground the last of Kramskoi's rusalki is emerging from among the reeds, while in the background one of the women wrings out the water from her hair. The water bank is at the foot of a steep hill and surrounded by deep forest to the right. At the top of the small hill and to the right background is a small, seemingly unoccupied cabin. The subject matter and composition is likely to have been influenced by the work of the Hungarian painter and designer Hans Makart.

摘自英文维基百科「The Mermaids (Kramskoi)」（暂时没有中文条目，下面是英文原文），按 CC BY-SA 4.0 使用，去掉了参考文献、外部链接等尾部小节和表格，其余文字未作改动。