mythical
body of a woman
beautiful
connections
in caverns in the depth
mermen and their relations
the worship of nature-forces
monkey and fish-skin
Combines a fragment from Cassell's Encyclopaedia: A Storehouse of General Information (1911) with a fragment of Henri-Edmond Cross' Les Îles d'Or (1891–92) and a mermaid from Royal Academy Pictures and Sculpture.
The story
The sea is from Henri-Edmond Cross's Les Îles d'Or (1891–92), in the Musée d'Orsay: the Îles d'Hyères, off the French Mediterranean coast, painted in dots of colour. Cross (1856–1910) had co-founded the Société des Artistes Indépendants in 1884 with Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, and had moved to the south of France in 1891.
The mermaid is from a painting reproduced in Royal Academy Pictures and Sculpture. The lines beside it are lifted from the entry on mermaids in Cassell's Encyclopaedia (1911): the body of a woman, mermen and their relations, the worship of nature-forces.