Woman in front of the sun I, 1974, Joan Miro

Mariana in the South (1897), by J.W. Waterhouse

This painting of Mariana refers again to a poem by Tennyson, this time published in 1830 (see below).  The character originates from Shakespeare’s “Measure by Measure” in which Mariana withers by loneliness as her lover, Duke Angelo, chases another woman.

With blackest moss the flower-plots

 Were thickly crusted, one and all:

The rusted nails fell from the knots

 That held the pear to the gable-wall.

The broken sheds look’d sad and strange:

 Unlifted was the clinking latch;

 Weeded and worn the ancient thatch

Upon the lonely moated grange.

   She only said, ‘My life is dreary,

     He cometh not,’ she said;

   She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

     I would that I were dead!’

Her tears fell with the dews at even;

 Her tears fell ere the dews were dried;

She could not look on the sweet heaven,

 Either at morn or eventide.

After the flitting of the bats,

 When thickest dark did trance the sky,

 She drew her casement-curtain by,

And glanced athwart the glooming flats.

   She only said, 'The night is dreary,

     He cometh not,’ she said;

   She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

     I would that I were dead!’

Upon the middle of the night,

 Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:

The cock sung out an hour ere light:

 From the dark fen the oxen’s low

Came to her: without hope of change,

 In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,

 Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn

About the lonely moated grange.

   She only said, 'The day is dreary,

     He cometh not,’ she said;

   She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

     I would that I were dead!’

About a stone-cast from the wall

 A sluice with blacken’d waters slept,

And o'er it many, round and small,

 The cluster’d marish-mosses crept.

Hard by a poplar shook alway,

 All silver-green with gnarlèd bark:

 For leagues no other tree did mark

The level waste, the rounding gray.

   She only said, 'My life is dreary,

     He cometh not,’ she said;

   She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

     I would that I were dead!’

And ever when the moon was low,

 And the shrill winds were up and away,

In the white curtain, to and fro,

 She saw the gusty shadow sway.

But when the moon was very low,

 And wild winds bound within their cell,

 The shadow of the poplar fell

Upon her bed, across her brow.

   She only said, 'The night is dreary,

     He cometh not,’ she said;

   She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,

     I would that I were dead!’

All day within the dreamy house,

 The doors upon their hinges creak’d;

The blue fly sung in the pane; the mouse

 Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek’d,

Or from the crevice peer’d about.

 Old faces glimmer’d thro’ the doors,

 Old footsteps trod the upper floors,

Old voices call’d her from without.

   She only said, 'My life is dreary,

     He cometh not,’ she said;

   She said, 'I am aweary, aweary,’

     I would that I were dead!’

The sparrow’s chirrup on the roof,

 The slow clock ticking, and the sound

Which to the wooing wind aloof

 The poplar made, did all confound

Her sense; but most she loathed the hour

 When the thick-moted sunbeam lay

 Athwart the chambers, and the day

Was sloping toward his western bower.

   Then, said she, 'I am very dreary,

     He will not come,’ she said;

   She wept, 'I am aweary, aweary,

The Beginning of Life, 1900, Frantisek Kupka

The Way of Silence, 1903, Frantisek Kupka

Bathing Woman, 1925, Joan Miro

The Metamorphosis of the Lovers, 1938, Andre Masson

Medium: oil

In the Tower of Sleep, 1938, Andre Masson

The Siren (1901), by J.W. Waterhouse

Compared to “Ulysses and the Sirens” painted in 1891, the siren shown here is a much more humanlike creature.  Only at the very end of her legs some scales are visible to show that she actually belongs to the sea.  The shipwrecked sailor does not believe his eyes when he sees the naked figure playing the lyre, but the fear for her power prevails on his face.