After reading through The Feejee Mermaid Hoax, I came across a description that heavily intrigued me. It was the description of an African American mermaid showcased at a fair in France, the sight of this mermaid was translated into art by M. Gautier. I decided to dive deeper into this art and found M. Guatier’s representation depicted in a hand-colored engraving from 1817 created by the artist John Pass, titled, “Mermaids Exhibited Successively in the Years 1758, 1775, & 1795”. ( pictured first). I then found more representations similar to these, in Gahagan and Godby’s, ” A Mermaid, situated on a Rock.” ( pictured second)

I’m not the best at artistic analysis and would love for people to add to my observations in this piece. What I found interesting about these mermaids is how different they all are, and how their time period and the focuses of the people at the time, influenced them. These images completely defied my previous knowledge of mermaids as beautiful, golden-haired, skinny, stunning beasts. Here the image is completely reversed, as they have huge ears, protruding stomachs, bulk arms, messy hair, etc. I find it interesting how society has developed these images into our current idea of mermaids and wonder what events shaped mermaids into the current adapted images we have today. I included an image of the original “The Little Mermaid” which is where I think a lot of our minds go when thinking about mermaids, and the difference between the 3 is completely different and uncanny. I would like to dive deeper into the criticism of the new “Little Mermaid” movie for its “misrepresentation, ” as these images prove that maybe the movie wasn’t so wrong after all, and maybe it is the most accurate representation. I think that this could be a possible discovery project for me, where I could analyze these past images of mermaids and analyze how our current representations tie back to medieval and industrial representations.