JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE (1849-1917) Biography

Description / Expertise

J W Waterhouse is one of the few artists to combine influences from the two main currents in late nineteenth century British art: one derived from the Pre-Raphaelites, the other from French painting. He was a painter of poetical subjects drawn from Keats, Tennyson, Shakespeare and classical mythology. Although his subject matter and romantic approach owe much to Pre-Raphaelitism, his bold painterly technique derives from French artists such as Bastien Lepage. Indeed all his friendships were made among the French-influenced artists of the Newlyn School, rather than the circles around Burne-Jones.

In spite of his many drawings of heads, his portraits in oils are rare. The sitters are generally the daughters or wives of friends or patrons, although occasionally he was just struck by a certain aspect of beauty. Perhaps this was the case in Portrait of a Young Lady. Painted before or during his visit to Italy, the sitter may well be the artist's sister Jessie whom he is known to have used as a model.

The young woman's head is modelled with strength and subtlety with the tenderness of the skin tones and gentle shadows of her features. By contrast, the fashionable shape of the ribboned hat is painted with powerful and sweeping strokes, in which colour and texture are unhesitatingly defined. This work perfectly exemplifies the artist's style before his journey to Italy the following year.

John William Waterhouse was born in Rome, although his family returned to London while he was still a child. He entered the Royal Academy Schools in 1870 and began exhibiting at the Society of British Artists in 1872 and at the Royal Academy in 1874, making his debut as a painter of eastern and classical genre scenes and large reconstructions of incidents from ancient history.

The following year he initiated his poetic phase with `The Lady of Shalott', which was bought by Sir Henry Tate, and is today one of the most popular paintings in the Tate Gallery. Despite his preferred subject matter after this date, Waterhouse showed primarily at the Royal Academy, although he also exhibited a few works at the more `aesthetic' venues of the Grosvenor and New Galleries. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1885 and Royal Academician in 1895.