About this work
Aby Altson, a student at the National Gallery School in the late 1880s, won the school’s second Travelling Scholarship in 1890 and headed for Paris. In this work, Altson uses a Classical subject to demonstrate his skill at composition and painting the nude. Four nymphs take a break from luring unsuspecting sailors to their deaths. The figures are dramatically lit, as if illuminated from an opening in the roof of the cavern. A gap in the rock wall gives a view to the open sea, contrasting the sequestered world of the grotto with the real world outside.