Again based on Ovidius, Flora is the Roman goddess of spring, flowers and nature. Here she is shown being kissed on her arm by Zephyrus, the god of the benevolent western wind, who has brought his disciples: the Zephyrs. The god traps Flora in a chain of white roses.
The most famous depiction of the same scene is the Primavera from Botticelli. Besides the seduction, Botticelli also showed the pregnancy of Flora. She is therefore also the goddess of new life. Waterhouse highlighted that by the voluptuous breasts, which are well exposed by Flora’s raised arms.
The painting was commissioned by George McCulloch, a retired businessman who made a fortune in Australian silver mining.
Another painting based on the 21 letters from Ovidius, collectively known under the name Heroides. The story of Ariadne is most renowned from her helping her beloved Theseus to kill the Minotaur and escape out of the labyrinth that her father had built. She did this by giving him a ball of thread so that he could find his way back. Here she is shown sleeping on a bench, while her lover is leaving her behind and sails away. The two panthers represent the god Dionysus who seduces her and makes her his wife.
In the Vatican Museum, there is a marble Hellenistic sculpture showing Ariadne in almost the same pose as on this painting. Waterhouse must have used it as a model. There are also obvious resemblances with the painting of Saint Cecilia (1895): the ship in the background, the balustrade separation and the sleeping woman to name just a few. In 1895, there was a large exhibition of Venetian art in London and its effect on his paintings is undeniable. Waterhouse becomes more and more influenced by the paintings of Botticelli and other works from the Italian Renaissance.
Because Prometheus had stolen the fire from Mount Olympus, Zeus punished mankind by creating Pandora. She was sent to earth with a jar that was not to be opened. But man’s thirst for knowledge was too strong and when she opened the box, sickness, death and all other of world’s evils escaped.
In a jar an odious treasure is
Shut by the gods’ wish:
A gift that’s not everyday,
The owner’s Pandora alone;
And her eyes, this in hand,
Command the best in the land
As she flits near and far;
Prettiness can’t stay
Shut in a jar.
Someone took her eye, he took
A look at what pleased her so
And out came the grief and woe
We won‘t ever be rid of,
For heaven had hidden
That in the jar.
In the works of Waterhouse in the 1890’s, the somewhat cold classicism was gradually replaced with a warmer English version of symbolism that some even call a late outburst of romanticism.
Hylas is a character from Greek and Roman mythology as recorded in the Metamorphoses by the poet Ovidius. Whereas in 1893, Waterhouse painted only one nymph approaching the sleeping Hylas, we see here a group of seven water nymphs (naiads) surprising Hylas when he is filling his jar with water from the pond. The nymphs all have very similar faces to stress that they are no ordinary human beings. Their erotic desire makes them lure Hylas into the pond where he will drown. Waterhouse had a fascination for strong, but fatal women associated with water. One can only guess what this is based on.
In 2018, this painting attracted a lot of media attention when the Manchester Art Gallery moved it out of public display as a move “against the objectification and exploitation of women”. After a storm of protests against this form of censorship, the Manchester City Council ordered that the painting should be moved back in its original position.
Yet another example where a nymph transforms into a tree (see also Phyllis and Demophoön, 1905). Here Daphne is fleeing from Apollo’s advances because she decided to remain a virgin. To help her, she is turned into a laurel tree by her father, the river-god Peneus who is represented by the river in the background. Apollo continued to admire the laurel tree and used his eternal youth to prevent the leaves from withering.
The work is clearly inspired by the marble statue of Bernini from Galleria Borghese in Rome. Waterhouse never managed to sell this painting and that is probably also because the art critics reviewed it in a very negative way. They criticized in particular the feeble representation of Apollo.
Princess Phyllis was turned into an almond tree by the gods to punish Demophoön, who had broken his vow to marry her. Full of remorse, Demophoön caresses the tree that immediately starts to flower. Because Phyllis forgives him, their souls are reunited, but she does not regain her human body so their love remains spiritual.
Waterhouse had used the theme of bodies transforming into trees earlier in “A Hamadryad” (1893) and he will use it again in “Apollo and Daphne” (1908). The work was originally bought by the Henderson family, but its location was unknown for a long time, until it recently reappeared in a private collection.
Women and water somehow intrigued Waterhouse so it is no surprise that he painted the Danaïdes. These 50 daughters of King Danaus were forced to marry the 50 sons of his rival King Aegyptus with the task to kill them in their wedding night. After the killings, the women were sentenced to death and in the underworld they were condemned to fill a large jar with a big hole in it. Only one daughter refused to assassinate her husband because she truly loved him and this couple started the dynasty of the new rulers of Argos.
The first shown painting is regarded as a study of the second one that was completed two years later. Being only discovered in 1989, it is nevertheless a painting in its full right. The later version was sold to the magnate James Murray and ended up in the Aberdeen Art Gallery in 1927.
Boreas is the name given by Ovidius to the cold northern wind. He can be seen in this painting only by the trees and clothes bending by his force. The woman that he is trying to catch is the Athenian princess, Oreithyia, who first declined his courtship, but cannot resist his brute power. She became later the goddess of mountain winds.
This painting is even more powerful than the earlier “Windflowers” due to the use of cold colours and the protective position of the arms of the woman. Waterhouse also made a beautiful chalk drawing that is nowadays almost as popular as this painting.
The nymph Echo was condemned to repeat the words that other people were saying. She fell in love with Narcissus, but Narcissus had only eyes for his own reflection in the water. As a result of this unfulfilled love, Narcissus turned into the well-known flower and Echo disappeared in the mountains where her voice can still be heard.
The melancholy of unfulfilled love is probably what makes Waterhouse’s works so popular these days. After his death in 1917, in the midst of a cruel war, his works soon became forgotten. Interest revived only in 2009, when the Royal Academy of Arts and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts organized a major exhibition of his works that travelled around the world.
However, while Meleager’s Garlandhelped give visibility to Asclepiades’ work in the cultured circles of the Roman elite, and while the educated audiences of the first century BCE may have received the epigram on Nannion and Bitto as a “beautiful antiquity,” the fact remains that, from the third century BCE through to the final quarter of the first century BCE, no substantial source, either Greek or Roman, dealing with the themes of sexual or amorous relations between women has come down to us.
thanks for that clarification sandra boehringer of female homosexuality in ancient greece and rome by sandra boehringer (trans. anna preger)! i wonder who is responsible for the introduction of discourses on sexual or amorous relationships between women into the roman cultural imagination, perhaps by introducing the theme to mythological fiction….
ALT
