Called the ‘modern pre-Raphaelite’, John William Waterhouse is an English painter that focused mainly through his paintings on classical themes, historical and literary subjects.
Although he started painting genre scenes during his trips to Italy, John William Waterhouse later showed his interest in depicting themes associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, especially those with powerful femmes fatales subjects and plein-air paintings.
The first work of art that got him favorable reviews and praise was ‘Consulting the Oracle’ in 1884, which was bought Sir Henry Tate and is today one of the four pictures of Waterhouse being featured in the Tate Gallery in London. The oil on canvas painting shows a “semicircle of woman seeking the prophecies of the Teraph (a human skull), and the figure of the priestess as she ‘interprets its decree with terror”.
Although he did not finish his painting series on Ophelia due to his death in 1915, they remain one of his most recognized works. Ophelia is a fictional character from William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet and is one of the two female characters in the play. The famous character was previously depicted by pre-Raphaelite painters Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais. Other female characters from Shakespeare plays that Waterhouse has painted include Juliet and Miranda.
Mythology is also a favorite theme in Waterhouse’s works and several mythological characters and creatures are present in many of his oil on canvas including Ariadne, Pandora, Apollo and Daphne, the Danaïdes and Psyche.
Romantic and dreamy, John William Waterhouse’s works of art still have a distinctive style and have been recognized for his depiction of famous women figures throughout history and fiction and the romanticism of their story through his paintings.
