Lot Essay
This charming and reticent picture is a notable rediscovery. Anthony Hobson gives no location in his 1980 catalogue, and still refers to the work as 'lost' in 1989 (loc.cit.). Blackburn describes the subject as follows in Academy Notes: 'In wind-blown draperies of slate-colour and blue, a girl passes through a spring landscape accented by pink blossom and daffodils.' As this suggests, the picture looks back to the aestheticism of the 1860s and '70s. Albert Moore himself, it seems, could hardly have conceived anything that carried less narrative meaning or made a purer vehicle for an ideal of beauty. There is even an echo of his pictures Shells (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) and Sea-Gulls (Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead), both exhibited at the Royal Academy in the early 1870s, in which girls are seen walking on the beach, their drapery blown in the wind.
On closer scrutiny, however, the picture reveals a dimension which proves that, after all, Waterhouse was the symbolist we should expect him to be by this date. Boreas, the north wind in Greek mythology, does more than provide a title; since he usually personifies winter in allegories of the Four Seasons, he represents the harsh old order against which the tender spring flowers are struggling, a change of which the girl, with her wistful expression, seems well aware, and identifies with by placing a daffodil in her hair (though this is vital for the composition too, form and content happily coinciding). When the picture is viewed in this light, it is not Albert Moore's windblown maidens that offer the most meaningful precedent but Walter Crane's numerous paintings on the theme of winter and spring. Crane's obsession with this image of death and rebirth constitutes one of the salient features of English symbolism.
The pictures from Waterhouse's later career are often variations on a theme, and Boreas is no exception. As Hobson guessed, it is closely related to Windflowers (private collection; repr. Hobson, 1980, pl.76, 1989, pl.67), a picture exhibited at the RA in 1903 in which a full-length figure of a girl is seen crossing an open stretch of countryside, her drapery blowing in the wind; and March Winds, another contemporary but still missing work, no doubt explored the idea yet again. The figure in Windflowers clasps a bunch of anemones, and the group as a whole anticipates a series of works in which girls in spring landscapes are occupied in gathering flowers. This includes Narcissus, A Song of Springtime (both shown at the RA in 1913), and others (see Hobson, 1980, pls. 95, 97, 128-9, 134-6).
The picture seems to have excited little critical comment when it was exhibited in 1904, but this is not surprising. Reviews now tended to be much shorter than they had been in the heyday of Victorian painting, while romantic, literary and historical figure subjects were rapidly going out of fashion. Waterhouse was only too well aware of this trend. Although he continued to paint figure subjects until his death in 1917, like Poynter, Dicksee, Herkomer and others faced with the same predicament, he devoted much of his energy in his later years to the more lucrative field of portraiture.
On closer scrutiny, however, the picture reveals a dimension which proves that, after all, Waterhouse was the symbolist we should expect him to be by this date. Boreas, the north wind in Greek mythology, does more than provide a title; since he usually personifies winter in allegories of the Four Seasons, he represents the harsh old order against which the tender spring flowers are struggling, a change of which the girl, with her wistful expression, seems well aware, and identifies with by placing a daffodil in her hair (though this is vital for the composition too, form and content happily coinciding). When the picture is viewed in this light, it is not Albert Moore's windblown maidens that offer the most meaningful precedent but Walter Crane's numerous paintings on the theme of winter and spring. Crane's obsession with this image of death and rebirth constitutes one of the salient features of English symbolism.
The pictures from Waterhouse's later career are often variations on a theme, and Boreas is no exception. As Hobson guessed, it is closely related to Windflowers (private collection; repr. Hobson, 1980, pl.76, 1989, pl.67), a picture exhibited at the RA in 1903 in which a full-length figure of a girl is seen crossing an open stretch of countryside, her drapery blowing in the wind; and March Winds, another contemporary but still missing work, no doubt explored the idea yet again. The figure in Windflowers clasps a bunch of anemones, and the group as a whole anticipates a series of works in which girls in spring landscapes are occupied in gathering flowers. This includes Narcissus, A Song of Springtime (both shown at the RA in 1913), and others (see Hobson, 1980, pls. 95, 97, 128-9, 134-6).
The picture seems to have excited little critical comment when it was exhibited in 1904, but this is not surprising. Reviews now tended to be much shorter than they had been in the heyday of Victorian painting, while romantic, literary and historical figure subjects were rapidly going out of fashion. Waterhouse was only too well aware of this trend. Although he continued to paint figure subjects until his death in 1917, like Poynter, Dicksee, Herkomer and others faced with the same predicament, he devoted much of his energy in his later years to the more lucrative field of portraiture.