Banshee, Song in the Attic

On the left, a woman in a flowing red dress arches backward against billowing white drapery, head thrown back and mouth open as though singing or wailing. On the right, inside a glass-roofed studio, rows of classical plaster casts and figure studies crowd the rafters above three white-haired men in work clothes who stand shoulder to shoulder, gazing directly out of the picture.

Warm crimson and flesh tones for the singing figure contrast with the cool blue-grey light and white plaster of the studio; brushwork is loose and fluid in the drapery, more solidly modeled in the men's faces. The pairing of a ghostly singer with a busy sculptor's workshop gives the scene an eerie, theatrical charge.