The story behind the painting
Ulysses and the Sirens
Ulysses tied himself to a mast to hear the sirens. Waterhouse gave them claws, and Homer gave their song a far stranger promise.
- Sirens should be beautiful. Look again. Claws.
- Ulysses asked for this. Tied to the mast, so he could hear them sing.
- His crew hears nothing. Wax in every ear.
- One lands on deck, inches from a rower. He cannot hear her.
- Homer has two sirens. Waterhouse painted seven.
- Bird-women, from a Greek vase. Critics hated the claws.
- Why risk it? Their song promises him the whole future.
- He got past the song. None of these rowers ever got home.
Ulysses and the Sirens is an 1891 painting by John William Waterhouse of Ulysses tied to his ship's mast while sirens, painted as birds with women's heads, swoop around his deafened crew; it hangs in the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.
What does Waterhouse's Ulysses and the Sirens show?
Waterhouse shows the moment from Homer's Odyssey when Ulysses' ship slips past the sirens, who lured sailors to the rocks with their song. Instead of lovely women, he painted them as birds with women's heads.
Warned by the sorceress Circe, Ulysses chose to hear the song and survive it. He ordered his crew to lash him upright to the mast and, if he begged to be freed, to tie him tighter. In Homer, two of his men did exactly that.
Why can't the crew hear the sirens?
Homer's Ulysses kneaded a wheel of wax soft in the sun and pressed it into every rower's ears. Deaf to the music, the men bent to their oars and drove the ship on through the narrow strait.
One siren has dropped onto the deck itself, leaning in close to a rower's face. Others circle the mast and the stern. Waterhouse makes the threat physical: wings, feathers, gripping feet, all within arm's reach.
Why did Waterhouse paint the sirens as birds?
Homer's sirens are a pair: they sing of 'our two voices'. When the picture was shown at the Royal Academy in 1891, the Saturday Review noted that Waterhouse had painted seven, women above the waist and birds below.
The bird-women came from a fifth-century-BC Greek vase in the British Museum. Some critics admired the learning; others found the 'vulture claws' grotesque and asked how such creatures could sing sweetly.
Waterhouse did not invent the bird-women. Most critics at the 1891 Royal Academy show were convinced he had taken them from a fifth-century-BC Greek stamnos, a storage jar in the British Museum that was widely known from a printed illustration. M. H. Spielmann of the Magazine of Art admitted it was hard to give up the idea of womanly sirens, but reminded readers that it was their voices, not their looks, that enchanted passing sailors. The Times was less forgiving: it called them harpies, birds of prey with women's faces, and complained that the painting gave no sense of the song that held Ulysses. (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne)
In Homer the sirens call Ulysses by name and promise that whoever listens will go on wiser, because they know all that happened at Troy and everything that will happen in the world. The lure is knowledge.
What happened to Ulysses and the Sirens after 1891?
Sir Hubert Herkomer, the National Gallery of Victoria's adviser in London, bought the painting for £1,200 in June 1891, and it reached Melbourne late that year. There the reception was harsher than in London. Letters to the Argus called the purchase a waste of public money and a preference for foreign over local art, and two writers thought Ulysses looked like a criminal tied to a mast. Herkomer defended his choice in print in 1892. The painting has stayed in Melbourne ever since; on 6 November 2026 the NGV listed it on display in the 19th Century European Paintings Gallery, Level 2, NGV International. (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne)
The ship rowed clear and the crew unbound him. But later in Book 12, after the men ate the cattle of the Sun, Zeus struck the ship with lightning and they all fell into the sea. Ulysses alone survived.
The details at a glance
Where is Ulysses and the Sirens?
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Sources and further reading
- Ulysses and the Sirens — National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
- Museum commentary — National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
- Artist biography: John William Waterhouse (Wikipedia, English)
- Ulysses and the Sirens (Wikipedia, English)