The Little Mermaid Saved the Prince 

Curator: Here we have Edmund Dulac’s watercolour drawing, "The Little Mermaid Saved the Prince." Editor: The turbid blues and greens of the water dominate—it's a frothy, energetic composition. There’s a powerful, almost overwhelming sense of nature. Curator: Indeed. The artist skillfully employs washes and varied brushstrokes to convey depth and movement, almost as though we are witnessing a fleeting moment. Dulac uses layering to emphasize the contrast between the white foam and the darker depths. Editor: I'm immediately struck by the pre-Raphaelite depiction of the mermaid—she's very ethereal with the flowered crown, an almost tragic figure suspended in a moment of salvation. Saving him, yes, but knowing it's futile. The figures are very subtly rendered in proportion to the water, suggesting how helpless human endeavor is in nature's immensity. Curator: That's interesting. One might say Dulac is commenting on Romantic ideals, depicting a figure caught between worlds, where the formal constraints of the narrative allows him to investigate a play of chromatic intensity through color contrast, while he binds narrative and emotion through figure arrangement. Editor: Precisely. The water itself takes on a symbolic role—the churning unconscious, the force of fate itself. Look how the drawing suggests both protection and imprisonment. The prince's limp body indicates his vulnerability, juxtaposed with her resolute gaze. She’s performing a potent symbolic act, yet the outcome remains ambiguous. Curator: Dulac’s masterful employment of watercolors allows for both precision and an element of unpredictability, in line with the romanticism that typified some artists’s visions for these stories. The balance between clarity and ambiguity underscores the overall tension. Editor: I leave feeling that Dulac’s image of the little mermaid shows both the personal cost of empathy, and the immensity and force of our primordial beginnings, represented by the deep water. Curator: A beautiful summary, capturing the intricate and fascinating layering apparent in the illustration’s formal components.