Biography of John William Waterhouse 1849-1917

London Times Obituary. 12th February 1917. Mr. J. W. Waterhouse, R.A. AN ECLECTIC PAINTER. Mr. John William Waterhouse [deceased], R.A., died at his house in St. John's Wood on Saturday, after a long illness, in his 68th year. The first of his paintings exhibited at the Royal Academy was "Sleep and his half-brother Death" in 1874, and since then there have been few Academies without one or two of his works. He was elected an Associate in 1885, the year of one of his best-known paintings, the "St. Eulalia". "The Magic Circle", painted in 1886, which was purchased for £650 for the Chantrey Bequest Collection, and "The Lady of Shalott", which was exhibited at the Academy in 1888, were others of his most popular works. He became an R.A. in 1895. His painting, "Hylas and the Nymphs", shown at the Royal Academy in 1897, passed into the possession of the Corporation of Manchester, and by them was lent for exhibition in Glasgow in 1901 and at the Franco-British Exhibition seven years later. At other loan exhibitions in Whitechapel, Manchester, the City of London Guildhall, and at Earl's Court examples of his work have been on view from time to time. His wife several times exhibited paintings of floral subjects at the Royal Academy. Mr. Waterhouse was an eclectic painter. He painted pre-Raphaelite pictures in a more modern manner. He was, in fact, a kind of academic Burne-Jones, like him in his types and his moods, but with less insistence on design and more on atmosphere. His art was always agreeable, for he had taste and learning as well as considerable accomplishments; he was one of those painters whose pictures always seemed to suggest that he must have done better in some other work. This means that he never quite "came off", that he raised expectations in his art which it did not completely satisfy; and a reason of this, no doubt, is to be found in his eclecticism. He never quite found himself or the method which would completely express him. One feels that his figures are there to make a picture rather than that they are occupied with any business of their own. They do make it very skillfully and prettily, but neither they nor the pictures seem to be quite alive. He was at his best, perhaps, in the "Martyrdom of St. Eulalia", in the Tate Gallery, where he escapes more than usual from the Burne-Jones lethargy, which, though very natural and expressive in Burne-Jones himself, seems to be a mere artistic device in Waterhouse. But he was, at any rate, quite free from that theatricality which is the common vice of academic subject pictures. He painted always like a scholar and a gentleman, though not like a great artist.

Daily Telegraph Obituary, 13th February 1917, by Sir Claude Phillips. DEATH OF MR. J.W. WATERHOUSE, R.A. SPECIAL MEMOIR By SIR CLAUDE PHILLIPS. We regret to announce the death of Mr John William Waterhouse [deceased], R.A., who passed away on Saturday, after a long illness, in his 68th year. There are painters who are known as painters' painters. In other words, there are artists whose vocation would seem to lie in catering for the great public, and others who use palette and brush from sheer delight in their handicrafts. A modern of the moderns, Mr Waterhouse may be said to have spent his life in experimenting in and perfecting himself in his technique. An eclectic and a devout believer in "art for art's sake", the late Academician passed through many stages in the drastic business of educating himself for his life task. A symbolist, to start with, it was impossible for a painter of Mr Waterhouse's susceptibilities not to be caught in the great naturalistic wave which swept Europe in the early eighties. Thus we find him for a considerable number of years going direct to nature for the inspiration, while, like many other realists, he went the length of posing his models out of doors in the brilliant sunlight. Plein air was the gospel of the movement, and it is certain that Mr Waterhouse succeeded in giving his canvases those vibrating, atmospheric qualities which were the aim of the new prismatic school. It is true that the critics have sought to establish the fact that Mr Waterhouse was at the time influenced by Alma-Tadema. The fact that he interested himself largely in classic subjects no doubt gave colour to the idea that he was at heart a classicist. But this was far from being the case. With the late Academician the manner and not the matter was the thing. For whether he was depicting Miranda, Diogenes, or St Eulalia, it was a colour problem that the artist envisaged his subject. Who, for instance, does not recall the exquisite harmonies of the picture called "The Magic Circle", where the subtle juxtaposition of mauves and blues recall the happiest inspirations in Persian art? And a dozen other instances might be cited. It was as no cold formalist that Mr Waterhouse envisaged scenes historical. The glamour of the born colourist is to be traced on nearly every canvas to which he put his hand. John William Waterhouse was born in Rome in the year 1849, and was fortunate in possessing a father who not only devoted his life to art, but encouraged his son to follow his own profession. Thus the boy had leisure to spend his days studying the art treasures accumulated with such profusion in London. The National Gallery, the British Museum, and South Kensington became the happy haunts of a student who devised the most original modes of familiarising himself with the work of the great masters. For not only did he model from the antique (it was modelling rather that painting that the youngster essayed in those early days), but established a system of drawing from memory, which he believed to be of great assistance to him in his after-work. Thus, the picture closely scrutinised and examined in the National Gallery by day would be reproduced from memory at night, a valuable aid to training the retentive qualities of the artistic mind. It was while he was thus engaged in sitting at the feet of the old masters that Mr Waterhouse conceived the idea of painting that first series of allegorical subjects which dwelt with the mysteries of human existence. The artist, indeed, was only twenty-five when he exhibited in the Royal Academy the important picture called "Sleep and his half-brother, Death" an allegorical work which attracted a good deal of attention in the spring exhibition of 1874. It was a year later that Mr Waterhouse sent "Miranda" to Burlington House, when he also contributed the canvas called "Whispered Words". It was not, however, till the year 1876 that Mr Waterhouse was honoured to the extent of being placed on the line. This coveted privilege was accorded the picture called "After the Dance";, since when the later artist may be said to have been invariably well hung. For, apart from the brilliance of his technique, his shapely way of laying on paint (a subject we have already touched upon), many of Mr Waterhouse's themes were calculated to attract popular attention. Such, for instance, was the work of 1875, called "A Sick Child Brought into the Temple of Aesculaplus", and such, again, was undoubtedly the historical picture named "The Remorse of Nero after his Mother's Death". A canvas called "The Tibia" was exhibited at Burlington House the same year, while the painter completed the work entitled "La Favorita" the following year. ELECTED TO THE ACADEMY Passing to the year 1882, we find Mr Waterhouse engaged on a "Diogenes", while the ensuing season he exhibited the most important picture he had as yet essayed, "The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius". Another canvas, called "The Bubbles", was also seen at Burlington House the same spring, while two years later the artist was elected as Associate of the Royal Academy. In truth Mr Waterhouse would seem to have been working at white heat at this particular time, for we find him tackling in succession such difficult subjects as "Consulting the Oracle" (the oracle Mr Waterhouse presents us with is the far-famed human head of the Teraph), "St Eulalia" and "The Magic Circle", already alluded to. In the canvas called "St Eulalia" the painter shows us the saint lying in the forum, covered with "the miraculous fall of snow", which Prudentius describes as "shrouding the body after her martyrdom." After such a theme the subjects of Ulysses and Circe would naturally present no difficulties to an artist, and accordingly we find Mr Waterhouse busying himself in 1891 with the canvas entitled "Ulysses and the Sirens". In natural sequence Circe followed, the painter breaking away from the traditional representation of the enchantress turning men into swine to the less hackneyed episode of "Circe Poisoning the Sea". A Danae was the output of the same year, the two pictures "A Hamadryad" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" following in 1893, a year Mr Waterhouse also exhibited a canvas called "A Naiad" at the New Gallery. "The Lady of Shalott" occupied the painter's attention next, and this subject, with the picture called "Field Flowers" represented his labours for 1894, yet it was neither with Tennyson's nor Keats' mystic heroine that Mr Waterhouse reached the high-water mark of his popularity. This was attained with his "St Cecilia" in the year 1895, when the Associate was raised to full Academic honours. "Pandora", another notable success, was the artist's next venture, and in 1897 we find the Academician exhibiting "Hylas and the Nymphs" at Burlington House, and picture entitled "Mariana in the South" at the New Gallery. It was to the last-named gallery that Mr Waterhouse sent a "Juliet" in the succeeding spring, his Royal Academy exhibits being two classic themes, namely "Flora and the Zephyrs" and "Ariadne". Of Mr Waterhouse's subsequent work it is hardly necessary to speak. His style, settling in the early nineties into the more or less definite groove that we have all come to know it by, had not materially altered since. Hence we need no more than refer to Mr Waterhouse's diploma picture "A Mermaid", his "Nymphs finding the Head of Orpheus" (exhibited in 1901), or "Echo and Narcissus", given to the world the following year. Other classic subjects include "Psyche opening the Golden Box", "Boreas", and "Psyche opening the Door into Cupid's Garden". Of the few portraits executed by the late Academician we have left ourselves small space to speak. But they were not the happiest inspirations emanating from his hand. Of the half-dozen limned by the painter in late years, Mrs Schreiber, Miss Molly Rickman and Mrs Charles Newton Robinson are perhaps most familiar to the public.

Birmingham Daily Post Obituary. 13th February 1917. MR. J. W. WATERHOUSE, R.A. Mr. John William Waterhouse [deceased] died at his house in St. John's Wood on Saturday, after a long illness, in his sixty-eighth year. SPECIAL MEMOIR The careers of few artists have been marked by so complete a change of aim as that of Mr. Waterhouse. He began, broadly speaking, as a painter of historical pictures and "genre" subjects, in both of which there was often to be found a strong dramatic and even tragic note. He ended in a series of works in which his chief concern was a suave tranquility and decorative effect. To the first, dramatic, period in which the story was regarded as of high importance belong "The Favourites of the Emperor Honorius" (1883), "Consulting the Oracle" (1884), and "St. Eulalia" (1885), this last, perhaps, his sole conscious effort at a "tour de force" in draughtmanship by the wonderful fore-shortening of the dead maiden's body. These three pictures did much to win him his Associateship in 1885, after a strenuous exhibiting career of fifteen years. Then followed "The Magic Circle" (1886), that striking presentation of a witch's spells, and "Mariamne", wife of Herod the Great, going to her execution, a most noble and queenly figure (1887). The pictures of this first period, harmonious in colour, are his nearest approach to the academic in painting, but in truth an academic painter Mr. Waterhouse never was. That mere surface finish to attain which the genuine academic will risk truth of tone and freshness of colour was ?? ?? Waterhouse desired . His subjects might occasionally confound him with the academic class, but his paintings never. It was always suggestive, never sought to worry out all the folds and convolutions of a drapery, the vast articulation of a tree, the unnumbered petals of a flower, for mere local completeness's sake at the expense of unity. Yet with this comparative freedom of execution, or rather contempt of tight finish, Waterhouse contrived to give an appearance of reality, truth to nature, and the freshness of first intention which no amount of merely conscientious labour can achieve. He was a realist in so far that he was not content with elaborate colour schemes divorced from nature such as may be found in the work of Rossetti and Burne-Jones. No old-master-like brown tinge pervades his pictures. The colour of his flesh painting has ranked for years with the very best; some, indeed, would rank him as the protagonist in this respect amongst his contemporaries. But realism with Waterhouse was never carried to its ruthless conclusion. He understood that a picture should be a decorative whole, and that minor truths of nature may fairly be subordinated to this great end. So in that very original "Ulysees and the Sirens" (1891), which England has lost to the Melbourne Gallery, there is not a cast shadow to be seen, yet such is the intensity of colour on ship and figures, rocks, and deep toned sea that the impression of Mediterranean sunlight is triumphantly attained. Waterhouse had a receptive mind as regards the work of other painters—he had early leanings towards the sterling art of Alma Tadema—but he never allowed his admiration of other men's work to swamp his own individuality. His style is his own, and he has had many young imitators. The year 1886 was important for him, as then he first saw the early Pre-Raphaelite pictures of Millais. They did not make him a Pre-Raphaelite, but their themes and feeling caused him to divide his interests in future between the classical subjects to which he was always faithful and those derived from Shakespeare and the English nineteenth century poets such as Keats and Tennyson. Though, too, he was wise enough not to attempt the meticulous Pre-Raphaelite delineation of Nature—a quest of the impossible—he found in their wonderful efforts at complete realisation direct from Nature confirmation in his belief that there is no reason why the treatment of the most poetical themes of any period should be divorced from natural truth. Waterhouse was the most virile draughtsman, and he painted with a vigorous full brush. There was no softening of angles at the expense of truth; there was always accent, but never any ostentation or cleverness in brushwork. His skill in two matters of details may be observed in all his pictures, the beautifully expressive, and apparently effortless, drawing of the hands, and the tender modelling of the turn of the brow toward the eye-sockets which gives a charming spirituality to so many of his heads. After 1892 the dramatic leaning may be said to have ceased, and henceforward Mr. Waterhouse aimed at a decorative serenity and a fairness of colour completely in harmony with his often very personal renderings of poetical motives, be they from his long-loved Homeric tales, and classical myths or from the later English poets of his choice. Thanks to the early insight of the late Sir Henry Tate, Waterhouse is well represented in the National Gallery of British Art, while many other public collections contain examples of one of the best painters and colourists our British school can show. F.S.R.