Waterhouse in his studio, at work on Lamia. (1908-9) (From the Dr. John Physick collection.)
Destiny (1900)
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Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (1900)
John William Waterhouse was a later painter associated with the Pre-Raphaelites whose life was not touched by the turbulence and intensity of some of his influences. A quiet man, he lived a private life and left behind few personal letters, so little about his life is known.
Nicknamed "Nino," a name that stayed with him his entire life, Waterhouse was born in 1849 in Rome, where his father worked as a painter. His family returned to England in 1850s, and Waterhouse assisted his father in the studio before entering the Royal Academy Schools in 1870.
In the 1870s and 80s, his paintings were exhibited in the Royal Academy. These early paintings were classical themes in the manner of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema and Academy president Frederic Leighton.
Interest in Pre-Raphaelite Themes
In 1883, he married Esther Kenworthy in 1883, and took a studio at the Primrose Hill Studios, along with a community of other artists. Paintings from this time, such as The Lady of Shalott (1888), which was purchased by Sir Henry Tate (later of the Tate Galleries in London), reveal his growing interest in Pre-Raphaelite themes, such as literature and Arthurian legend. Like the other Pre-Raphaelites, he particularly interested in themes of tragic women or powerful femme fatales. In his paintings, most of the subjects are women, and most of the men are victimized.
Millais was elected an associate to the Royal Academy in 1895, then a full member in 1895. He became quite commercially successful, exhibiting paintings around England and internationally. In 1900, he was one of the principal organizers of the Artist’s War Fund exhibition at Guildhall Gallery, for which he painted Destiny (see left). These paintings were then auctioned off by Christie's.
In 1901 he moved to St. John’s Wood, where he taught at the St. John’s Wood Art School, established by Alma-Tadema. He continued to paint until his death from cancer in 1917.
Waterhouse's Models
Recently, work has been done to identify the two specific models who appear so frequently and so emotively in Waterhouse's paintings. There are two in particular who appear over and over - both of them can be seen together in Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus (left). Cathy Baker, author of J.W. Waterhouse – Idyllic Visions, theorizes that the one on the right, who appears in his work most frequently, must have represented for Waterhouse the ideal of adolescent innocence, with her gentleness, expressive face, and girlish upturned nose. She is the model for all the female figures in Hylas and the Nymphs. Waterhouse continued to paint her through maturity, and she appears in his last painting, The Enchanted Garden.
Scholars believe this model could have been a Miss Muriel Foster, whose name and address appears on a sketch for the painting Lamia (visible at Yale University's Bridgeman Art Library website). The sketch is referenced by a famous Waterhouse scholar, Anthony Hobson, as having depicted the model Waterhouse used frequently. There was a Muriel Foster who lived at the address noted on the sketch, but her family seems to have been untirely unaware of any connection between her and the artist. Foster does mention in a letter to her nephew a "great disapproval" in her youth, which may have been referring to her time as a model, but this is uncertain.
His other favorite model, on the left, was dark-haired, with a more intense presence. She is featured as the femme fatale in Circe Invidiosa and as the tragic main character in Waterhouse's second treatment of Lady of Shalott. This model continues to be unidentified.
Whoever these women were, Waterhouse was never, unlike Rossetti, accused of untoward behavior with his models. He seems to have merely seen them as inspirations for his beautiful work.
Information compiled from Wikipedia and The Art and Life of John Waterhouse.