John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse (baptised 6 April 184910 February 1917) was an English painter known for working first in the Academic style and for then embracing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's style and subject matter. His paintings are known for their depictions of women from ancient Greek mythology, Arthurian legend, and the works of William Shakespeare. A high proportion depict a single young and beautiful woman in a historical costume and setting, though there are some ventures into Orientalist painting and genre painting, still mostly featuring women.

Born in Rome to English parents who were both painters, Waterhouse later moved to London, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art Schools. He soon began exhibiting at their annual summer exhibitions, focusing on the creation of large canvas works depicting scenes from the daily life and mythology of ancient Greece. Many of his paintings are based on authors such as Homer, Ovid, Shakespeare, Tennyson, or Keats.

Waterhouse's work is displayed in many major art museums and galleries, and the Royal Academy of Art organised a major retrospective of his work in 2009.

Biography

Early life Waterhouse was born in the city of Rome to the English painters William and Isabella Waterhouse in 1849, in the same year that the members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, including Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, were first causing a stir in the London art scene. The exact date of his birth is unknown, though he was baptised on 6 April, and the later scholar of Waterhouse's work, Peter Trippi, believed that he was born between 1 and 23 January. His early life in Italy has been cited as one of the reasons many of his later paintings were set in ancient Rome or based upon scenes taken from Roman mythology.

In 1854, the Waterhouses returned to England and moved to a newly built house in South Kensington, London, which was near to the newly founded Victoria and Albert Museum. Waterhouse, or 'Nino' as he was nicknamed, coming from an artistic family, was encouraged to become involved in drawing, and often sketched artworks that he found in the British Museum and the National Gallery. In 1871, he entered the Royal Academy of Art school, initially to study sculpture, before moving on to painting.

Early career

Waterhouse's early works were not Pre-Raphaelite in nature, but were of classical themes in the spirit of Alma-Tadema and Frederic Leighton. Those early works were exhibited at the Dudley Gallery, and the Society of British Artists, and in 1874 his painting Sleep and his Half-brother Death was exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibition. The painting was a success and Waterhouse went on to display his work at the annual exhibition every year until 1916, with the exception of 1890 and 1915. He then went from strength to strength in the London art scene. His 1876 piece, After the Dance, was given the prime position in that year's summer exhibition. Perhaps due to his success, his paintings typically became larger. However, a sketch book of Waterhouse's from that period included other studies of Arab models, indicating a fascination with the oriental that did not last beyond his early art. This can further be seen in the sketch An Eastern Reminiscence. Portrait of a Young Woman was completely unknown until the painting was discovered on the BBC television programme The Antiques Roadshow, featuring with a hole in the canvas. It was included in Peter Trippi's Waterhouse monograph.

Gallery In total, he produced 118 paintings. See List of paintings by John William Waterhouse for an almost complete list.

1870s

1880s

1890s

1900s

1910s