It turns out that the meme of people striding naked into the sea to transform into sea creatures, one so lovingly illustrated for Erotic Mad Science by Bokuman recently, has an artistic and perhaps even a mythological antecedent.

Found recently at Janitor of Lunacy.  The artist is Edwin Willard Deming (1860-1942) about whom I haven’t been able to learn a great deal (there’s a short biography here and a notice from The New York Times in 1914 about one of his exhibitions here), except that he achieved notice as a painter of scenes of Native American life, which makes me think that perhaps this painting is an illustration of a Native American story or myth, though my sadly-limited knowledge of such things means that this can be only conjecture on my part.  (If anyone knows better, please write in.)

For my part, the painting really does make me want to head for a seashore somewhere…