Clyties of the Mist

Clyties of the Mist is a large mythological painting by the British artist Herbert James Draper, dated 1912. It personifies the mists of a mountain valley as a group of pale, nude nymphs drifting upward toward the sun. The tall canvas, recorded at about 220 by 122 centimeters, is in a private collection; an oil study for it is also known.

What you are looking at

The format is tall and narrow, like a gorge. In the upper half, a nymph with long dark hair floats on her back, her body arched, one arm thrown up behind her head and the other trailing. Her flesh is luminous and pale, caught in the light pouring down from above. Wisps of white and grey vapor wrap around her hips and stream behind her like drapery.

Below and to the right, a second figure huddles in shadow, her face hidden in her arm, a dark cloak of mist around her. Lower still, other figures are half dissolved in cloud, and the rock walls of the valley loom grey-blue on either side. At the very top, a glimpse of cold blue sky and snowy peak marks where the sun is breaking through.

The myth of Clytie

In Ovid's Metamorphoses, Clytie is a water nymph who loved the sun god Helios (Sol). Abandoned by him, she sat on the ground for nine days without food or drink, turning her face to follow his chariot across the sky, until she was transformed into a flower that always turns toward the sun, traditionally the heliotrope, later often identified with the sunflower.

Draper turns the myth into a poetic image of weather. His Clyties, in the plural, are mists that rise from the valley each morning, drawn toward the sun, and vanish in its warmth: longing for the light that destroys them. The idea is Draper's own; there is no ancient story of mist nymphs by this name.

Draper and the late Victorians

Herbert James Draper (1863–1920) was one of the last painters of the Victorian classical tradition, known for sensuous mythological subjects such as The Lament for Icarus (1898), bought for the nation by the Tate, and The Pearls of Aphrodite. By 1912, with modernism advancing, his kind of painting was falling out of fashion, which gives this late, dreamlike work a valedictory quality.

Where to see it

The painting is privately owned. Draper's work is best seen in British public collections, above all Tate Britain. Related pages include Herbert James Draper and mythology paintings.