Oil on canvas, 29 × 16 inches (plus approximately 3 inches for frame)

This painting re-imagines Idyll XIII of Theocritus — the 3rd-century BC Greek poem recounting the fate of Hylas, companion of Heracles, who while drawing water is lured beneath the surface by water-nymphs. This interpretation transposes the pastoral myth into a scene of heightened sensual restraint, where surface and depth, innocence and desire, remain in delicate equilibrium.

Three naiads lean toward the still water, their gestures poised between invitation and entrapment.

The repetition of bowed heads forms a rhythmic sequence that stabilises the pictorial plane. Luminous flesh tones are set against the dark, viscous greens of the lily pond; the result is a composition where light itself becomes a moral agent, defining the threshold between mortal and elemental realms.

The brushwork alternates between clarity and diffusion, creating a texture that recalls the Venetian handling of water and fabric.

The work is less narrative than symbolic — a meditation on perception, temptation, and the act of looking. The myth is rendered not as drama but as visual music: a sustained chord of harmony and foreboding.

The tone finds an analogue in the poetry of Swinburne, whose Hymn to Proserpine speaks of beauty caught between life and dissolution:

“Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath.”

Here too, beauty and peril coexist. Idyll XIII invites reflection on how the classical imagination transforms desire into form — where the still water mirrors both the eye of the viewer and the depths it conceals.

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