Studies for Flora and the Zephyrs (recto) and (verso)

The present sheet is one of Waterhouse's characteristic freely executed charcoal studies. The standing figure is a study for a young girl to the right of the picture in Flora and the Zephyrs, 1897 (Schaeffer Collection, Sydney) carrying a bouquet of flowers wrapped up in a shawl. In the finished picture the figure is facing in the opposite direction. The study on the reverse may be related to the figure on the right of the composition reaching forward and picking a flower, again in the finished picture Waterhouse has altered the composition, this figure is now standing rather than kneeling and again is facing in the other direction, plucking a flower. The finished picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy, Summer Exhibition, 1898.

However this side of the drawing (verso) also bears strong similarities, although again the pose is reversed, to the kneeling girl in Spring spreads one green lap of flowers, 1910; a oil sketch for which is also called Flora (see Sotheby's, London, 19 June 1991, lot 236), which may suggest that although the finished oil paintings diverge in dates, Waterhouse developed ideas for them concurrently.