John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) was born in Rome of English parents, both artists. Italy was a positive palette of painters in the mid-19th century. Like Monmarte a century later, it attracted artists from the four corners of the Earth. Few probably knew – or cared – that Montmarte, the Martyrs’ Hill, was the site of St. Dionysius’ beheading in 258. Better still Rome, like Montmarte, attracted well-heeled potential purchasers, as Leonardo and Michelangelo had discovered centuries earlier.
Perhaps this appealed to the Nazarenes, a group of German artists, who early 19th century worked in Rome and tried to revive Christian art. These and others influenced a band of British painters in 1848 to protest against the current standards of British art. The Pre-Raphaelites are so called because they found inspiration in work of Italian painters prior to Raphael.
How much the young John William Waterhouse influenced in Rome or, in the late 1850s when his parents moved back to England, is open to conjecture. It is known he learnt at his father’s easel to develop his own very considerable skills as a painter. He was a success both artistically and, gratifyingly no impecunious artist, creating more than 200 paintings. Many depict tales from the mythology of Greece, Roman ancient Britain, in common with other Pre-Raphaelites artists. About half of Waterhouse’s works can be freely viewed and even downloaded at
www.jwwaterhouse.com, a very impressive site.
The Pre-Raphaelites were not without controversy. Fortunately they had the support of some leading figures of the latter half of the 19th century. One such defender was John Ruskin (1819-1900), a notable writer and art critic of the day who became professor of fine art at Oxford 1870. Ruskin’s social criticism was equally influential. His Unto the Last, published in 1860, is said to have influenced Mahatma Gandhi.
Whether Ruskin was aware of other activities of one of the chief founders of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, the brilliant painter and poet Dante Gabriele Rossetti (1828-82), is questionable. Born London of an Italian father, on the side Rossetti composed a number of limericks, as Baring-Gould notes, both proper and bawdy. The latter were admired by no less than George Bernard Shaw who, however, opined that they were unfit to be printed and should be left to oral transmission.
So why do no narcissus adorn Waterhouse’s painting, completed 14 years before he died in early 1917? In the later 19th century the Narcissi, which include both the garden daffodils and narcissus, had reached the peak of their popularity. This was doubtlessly assisted by poet William Wordsworth’s ‘golden daffodils’ alongside Derwent Water, botanical explorers and, finally such hybridizations as the famed ‘King Alfred’ daffodil. The waters of Victorian era society ran deep, rife with mysterious influences.
As Robert Fulford pointed out earlier this year in the National Post, early in the 20th century Havelock Ellis named intense self-love after the mythological Narcissus. (Henry) Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), a physician and writer on sex, was controversial for his writings. To say that his personal sexual life was unusual is to put it mildly. Fulford ignores this, only noting that, “Ellis turned a familiar human failing into a medical condition, which in 1980 was recognized (under the name ‘Narcissistic personality disorder’) by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
One suspects Waterhouse, with his associations to many a leading literati of the day, doubtless knew and viewed Ellis’ theories and possible personal life and disliked what he saw.
