The Siren

John William Waterhouse, the British painter who lived from 1849 to 1917, made The Siren in 1900, according to Guinness World Records. The oil on canvas measures 81 by 53 centimetres. A shipwrecked sailor holds onto a rock with one hand, while above him sits a woman with long auburn hair whose legs become fish scales and fins in the spray. In her hands is a lyre made of abalone shell.

Agnew's sold it on the artist's behalf on 1 February 1901 to James Gresham of Woodheys Park, Ashton-on-Mersey, who kept it until his death in 1914. At Christie's in London on 12 July 1917, as lot 132, Gooden & Fox bought it for Lord Leverhulme, and it passed to the Lady Lever Art Gallery. The gallery sold it at Christie's on 6 June 1958, as lot 167. By 1970 it had gone through the D'Offay-Couper Gallery to M. Bertonati, and in 1985 Seymour Stein bought it at Sotheby's.

Sotheby's sold it in London on 12 July 2018, as lot 12, against an estimate of £1,000,000 to £1,500,000. Sotheby's pages do not show the result. The Telegraph reports the price as £3,835,800, courtesy of Sotheby's, and Guinness World Records gives $5.08 million including the buyer's premium. Guinness lists it as the highest-priced painting of a merperson sold at auction.