JW Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite
Sackler Gallery, Royal Academy of Arts, London
In many ways, John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) was a typical Victorian painter, depicting with great skill and dexterity literary subjects inspired by the works of Tennyson, Keats and Shakespeare, as well as classical and historical themes. The flesh looks convincing, the garments look like they could be handled, the subjects dreamily distant. While he later became a follower of the Pre-Raphaelites, Waterhouse did not entirely reject the mechanistic approach of classical poses and elegant compositions – although, like them, he relished abundant detail, intense colours and the complex, if stagy, compositions of early Italian and Flemish art.
His early works, which tend to be precise and carefully ordered, adopted both the classical themes in the spirit of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and his concern with depicting naked and semi-naked female bodies, creating soft, sumptuous images of women, usually of classical renown.
By contrast, his later work is freer, more colourful and even more sensuous. Fascinated by intense passions, he was, for instance, so inspired by Tennyson’s romantic, if tragic, ballad, The Lady of Shalott, that he painted three episodes from the poem.
Based on the Arthurian legend, The Lady of Shallot caught the imagination of the Pre-Raphaelites who saw her as either posing the question faced by all artists, which is whether to create work about and in celebration of the world, or to enjoy the world by simply living in it. For others, the fictional beauty served as a metaphor concerned with the place of women in the Victorian world, as well as issues of sexuality.
In his most famous image, Waterhouse depicts the lone figure sitting in a boat, surrounded by a fine brocade tapestry trailing in the water, as she sets sail for Camelot, a wistful heroine destined to be alone. In another, she sits pensively at her loom, stretching to relieve any tension from the seemingly endless activity of weaving.
Whether depicting tragic or powerful femmes fatales, such as Circe, the “Queen Goddess” capable of transforming her enemies or those who offended her into animals through the use of magical potions, or Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, it is Waterhouse’s depiction of the female body and his relationship to it that raises fascinating questions about sexual desire, the power of the male gaze and the perception of women in general.
Painted at a time when, conventionally, most men could only see women naked under carefully controlled situations, whether this was in marriage or on the artist’s podium, the opportunity to behold lithesome, youthful naked bodies, carefully, even lovingly depicted in oils, was an opportunity to be savoured. In this regard, Whitehouse echoed the work of fellow academician Alma-Tadema, whose sensuous images of languid female bodies, often lying on marble tables, were offered as little more than celebrations of desirable beauty.
However, for Whitehouse, there are other, more engaging interactions with the women he painted. Far from depicting passive, nubile bodies, Whitehouse often shows them industriously carrying out womanly duties, such as spinning or weaving. In Penelope and her Suitors, the heroine appears self-contained, rejecting persistent suitors in favour of her engagement with her craft. Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, spent the day weaving her “mighty work” and the night unravelling it, so that it would never be finished.
Seen by some fanciful observers as a precursor of the “new woman”, it is Waterhouse’s obsession with the sensuality of the naked female body that is of as much interest as the subjects depicted.
Emmanuel Cooper
JW Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite continues until September 13
