500 days of ...

mermaids? Well maybe not. But I did finally see the movie 500 Days of Summer. Yes, I'm a bit late on this one but it looked too much like teen-age-melancholia for me and frankly I thought the tone was a downer. However, I became obsessed with this image:

Not of Zooey Deschanel, although she is lovely - the painting in the background. Because I'm kinda obsessed with mermaids. I've been trying to find a good quality image of this for quite some time:

These are The Darling Mermaid Darlings from the wonderful (and sadly no longer on the air) show Pushing Daisies. But the show wasn't popular enough for there to be scads of merch or photos or much of anything to be had even though the art direction was spectacular.

So I went on a new search for the painting from 500 Days of Summer. First I found this:

Cave of the Storm Nymphs - Edward Poynter

I'd never seen this before and although they're not mermaids, I love it. But something about that sea shell lyre was looking very familiar. Then after some more googling I discovered that the scene from the movie was shot at the Redwood Bar & Grill and the painting was actually commissioned for the bar itself:

Ship of Death - Louie Metz

I was very pleased with myself to have found it, but upon closer inspection (and I invite you to click and see for yourself) I found this mermaid to be looking a bit, well, sea sick ... disappointing. And then I went back and looked at the pretty storm nymphs again:

A tribute perhaps?