“The Lady of Shalott” by John William Waterhouse portrays the ending of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s 1832 poem of the same name.
The scene shows the plight of a young woman from Arthurian legend, who yearned with unrequited love for the knight Sir Lancelot but was isolated under a curse in a tower near King Arthur’s Camelot.
The Lady of Shalott was forbidden to look directly at the outside world. She was doomed to view the world through a mirror and weave what she saw into a tapestry. Her despair intensified when the Lady saw loving couples in the far distance.
One day she saw Sir Lancelot passing on his way in the reflection of her mirror, and she was overcome with desire and dared to look out at Camelot, bringing about the curse.
The lady decided to face her destiny and escaped by boat, to sail to Camelot and her inevitable death.
Her frozen body was found afterward by the knights and ladies of Camelot.
“With a glassy countenance
Did she look to Camelot.
And at the closing of the day
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.”
“The Lady of Shalott” is one of Waterhouse’s most famous masterpieces, which features the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
His artworks were notable for the depiction of women from ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend.
John William Waterhouse
Waterhouse worked in the Pre-Raphaelite style, several decades after the breakup of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which included artists such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, and William Holman Hunt.
Waterhouse embraced the Pre-Raphaelite style even though it had gone out of fashion in the British art scene, by the time he painted this painting.
Pre-Raphaelites
The Pre-Raphaelites was a group of English painters, poets, and art critics, founded in 1848.
The group intended to reform art by rejecting what it considered the mechanistic approach first adopted by the artists who succeeded Raphael and Michelangelo, hence the name “Pre-Raphaelite.”
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood sought a return to the abundant detail, intense colors, and complex compositions of Pre-Raphaelite Italian art.
The Pre-Raphaelites focused on painting subjects from modern life, and literature often used historical costumes for accuracy.
They painted directly from nature itself, as accurately as possible, and with intense attention to detail. The Brotherhood’s early doctrines, as defined by William Michael Rossetti, were expressed in four declarations:
- to have genuine ideas to express;
- to study Nature attentively, to know how to express them;
- to sympathize with what is direct and serious and heartfelt in previous art, to the exclusion of what is conventional and self-parading and learned by rote; and
- the most indispensable of all, to produce thoroughly good pictures and statues.
The Pre-Raphaelites defined themselves as a reform movement, created a distinct name for their art, and published a periodical to promote their ideas.
A later, medieval influence extended the movement’s power into the twentieth century with artists such as John William Waterhouse.
The Lady of Shalott
- Title: The Lady of Shalott
- Artist: John William Waterhouse
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Date: 1888
- Style: Pre-Raphaelite
- Dimensions: 183 cm × 230 cm (72 in × 91 in)
- Museum: Tate Britain
John William Waterhouse
- Name: John William Waterhouse
- Movement: Pre-Raphaelite
- Born: 1849 – Rome, Papal States
- Died: 1917 (aged 67) – London, England, United Kingdom
- Nationality: British
- Notable works:
- The Lady of Shalott
- The Favorites of the Emperor Honorius
- Circe Invidiosa
- Diogenes
- I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott
- Hylas and the Nymphs
- Echo and Narcissus
The Curse of the Lady of Shalott
Lady of Shalott
A Tour of Tate Britain
- “Christ in the House of His Parents” by John Everett Millais
- “Ophelia” by John Everett Millais
- “The Lady of Shalott” by John William Waterhouse
- “Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm” by William Etty
- “Claude Monet Painting by the Edge of a Wood” by John Singer Sargent
- “Love Locked Out” by Anna Lea Merritt
- “King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid” by Edward Burne-Jones
- “Snow Storm: Steam-Boat off a Harbour’s Mouth” by J. M. W. Turner
- “Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps” by J. M. W. Turner
- “The Gallery of HMS Calcutta (Portsmouth)” by James Tissot
- “Portsmouth Dockyard” by James Tissot
- “Self-Portrait” by J. M. W. Turner
The Lady of Shalott
A Virtual Tour of Pre-Raphaelite ArtistsJohn Everett Millais
- Isabella
- Christ in the House of His Parents
- The Martyr of Solway
- Ophelia
- Blow Blow Thou Wind
- The Black Brunswicker
- A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford
William Holman Hunt
- Our English Coasts
- Isabella and the Pot of Basil
- Self-portrait William Holman Hunt
- Sheltering a Christian Missionary from the Persecution of the Druids
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
- Lady Lilith
- Dante’s Dream
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Self Portrait
- The Beloved
- Bocca Baciata
- Paolo and Francesca da Rimini
- The Day Dream
John William Waterhouse
- The Lady of Shalott
- The Favorites of the Emperor Honorius
- Circe Invidiosa
- Diogenes
- I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott
- Hylas and the Nymphs
- Echo and Narcissus
- Ulysses and the Sirens
- Consulting the Oracle
- A Tale from the Decameron
- Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses
- Saint Eulalia
- Fair Rosamund
Marie Spartali Stillman
- Love’s Messenger
Ford Madox Brown
- Romeo and Juliet
- The Last of England
Henry Holiday
- Dante and Beatrice
Edward Burne-Jones
- The Star of Bethlehem
- King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid
Frederick Sandys
- Queen Eleanor
- Morgan-le-Fay
- Mary Magdalene
Frank Dicksee
- The Funeral of a Viking
John Collier
- Lady Godiva
William Dyce
- Francesca da Rimini
The Lady of Shallot by John William Waterhouse
~~~
“When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.”
– John Ruskin
~~~
Photo Credit: John William Waterhouse [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
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