Tag: John William Waterhouse

January : Waterhouse’s Boreas (part two)

But remember how I called him radical? Find the first part of this post HERE.

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 Ovid, Waterhouse’s most likely source material, tells. He tells who Orithyia’s related to, what her sons do; he tells of Boreas’ anger, he tells of Boreas’ actions—it is all telling, it is all what happens to her. Victorians did a lot of telling themselves; deciding the proper sphere of women, telling them the ideal they ought to live up to. 

Waterhouse, however, does no telling at all. He eschews the plot that Ovid, and most other treaters of this tale, focus on. The story is cast aside for the moment Waterhouse depicts. 

The girl is aligned with the nature around her. The colors of her clothes echo those around her, she like the nature around her is buffeted by the wind. The deep, soulful colors and textures connect her to her environment; the viewer’s eyes are drawn to her face, framed by her arm, by the billow of her mantle. Her face, her expression, and the daffodil in her ear.

In such a dark, deep color palette, the yellow is surprising. Daffodils are spring, a season far removed from the setting of the painting. Spring is rebirth, and change, and generally, in the language of flowers, that is just what the daffodil symbolizes. 

The Metamorphoses is all about rebirth. Characters meet life anew in changed forms, with their life situations changed drastically—and often tragically—along with it. As Peter Trippi puts it, in his book J. W. Waterhouse: 

“it was Ovid’s Metamorphoses to which he [Waterhouse] returned in every phase of his career, celebrating physical transformations as emblems of the passage from suffering to acceptance, from death to eternal life”. 

The point? 

In his portrayal of this girl, Waterhouse accepts the unknown. He does not tell us what is happening to her, how she relates to other aspects of the story. He does not tell anything about her, as his time could be so wont to do. Instead, Waterhouse accepts the silence of the moment, focusing in on the girl’s mysterious expression, an expression showing deepness, deep as the colors she wears, as the circles throughout the painting. The daffodil he places behind her ear suggests her own possibilities for transformation, for metamorphosis, subtly transcending the views of his society and time to create a gorgeous exploration of the mystical feminine. 

What do you think about all this? Are you a hardcore Waterhouse fan, hater, or new initiate? Comment below!

January : Waterhouse’s Boreas (part one)

“it was Ovid’s Metamorphoses to which he [Waterhouse] returned in every phase of his career, celebrating physical transformations as emblems of the passage from suffering to acceptance, from death to eternal life” (Peter Trippi, from his book J. W. Waterhouse)

John William Waterhouse is perhaps best known for his paintings of women, particularly in Classical and Medieval settings, retelling classic tales. He often retold stories from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the Ancient Roman Epic about magical physical changes. Ovid’s stories tend to focus on the chaos in the transformations, the fragility of life and the status quo of anyone’s experience, and the randomness of suffering. 

One of the hundreds of short tales winding throughout the Metamorphoses is that of “Boreas and Orithyia”. Ovid’s telling of this tale, most likely Waterhouse’s source material, corresponds to the purpose: it is a short transition piece to tie the previous story to the next section, in order to retain his goal of all the smaller stories in his work being connected. Ovid tells the thread matter-of-factly; Boreas, the North Wind, desires to marry the mortal Orithyia, but her father, having a grudge against Northerners (which is how it connects to the previous story, in which a Northerner harms Orithyia’s father’s family), forbids it. Boreas resorts to his customary violence and carries Orithyia off; he forces her to become his wife, and their children (who have wings—the Boreads) join Jason and the Argonauts, tying into the next part of the saga.

Orithyia is never focused on for herself. It is a highly technical story.

But now’s where we get to the actual painting: Waterhouse retells the story, painting a girl being buffeted by the wind. It is not strictly identifiable with the original tale at all, and the only reason we know what Waterhouse is retelling is by the title, Boreas. 

It is a completely different composition than Ovid’s, and certainly different from many of the other artistic retellings of the story, all of which depict the moment of abduction. No, Waterhouse’s take is so different as to be unrecognizable from the original plot—not only a different take, I would say, but a radical one.

John William Waterhouse is not usually someone tagged with that appellation, “radical”. To many he is a stuffy old Victorian Gentleman, who, beginning with his own lifetime, often found himself out of fashion and certainly is today. Recently, his painting Hylas and the Nymphs was temporarily taken down to invite museum-goers to participate in a discussion on the portrayal of women’s bodies in art, a good illustration of the negative way some people perceive his portrayals of women—as erotic objects to be looked at.

Hylas and the Nymphs, by J. W. Waterhouse

At first glance, Waterhouse’s painting seems completely in-step with his time. Women in the Victorian Era had limited rights and were idealized, especially idealized for being the center of the home and sexually pure. Women were expected to be modest, and were not encouraged to act in the outside world. 

The girl in Waterhouse’s painting is similarly modestly clad; she is beautiful and feminine, she is highly idealized. It is easy to look at this—and many of Waterhouse’s paintings—and write them off as highly aesthetic erotic portraits of the female body unrealistic to the full experience of being a woman. It is easy to look at him and his work and feel no connection between the idealized, Victorian females he portrays and the real woman you might be or know. 

But remember how I called him radical?

(tune in next time for the second part of this post!)