Song of the Siren

John La Farge

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Throughout his career, La Farge used watercolor in preparation for creating stained glass windows and mural compositions and as independent works of art. La Farge moved easily between mediums, often translating his preparatory watercolors into independent compositions for exhibition. Song of the Siren, a mythological composition depicting a shepherd lured by a siren’s song, is a replica of an illustration that he had made in the early 1870s, which appeared first as the frontispiece for Abby Sage Richardson’s Songs from the Old Dramatists (1873). Song of the Siren displays the artist’s interest in Japanese design with its compressed, flat composition organized around the sweeping diagonal between earth and water and his technical skill as a watercolorist, evident in the subtle modulation of tones and delicate control in rendering form and shadow.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.

Metropolitan Museum of Art