John William Waterhouse, R.A. (1849-1917)
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John William Waterhouse, R.A. (1849-1917)

Female head study for 'A Naiad'

Details
John William Waterhouse, R.A. (1849-1917)
Female head study for 'A Naiad'
oil on canvas laid on board
11 ¾ x 10 ¼ in. (30 x 26 cm.)
circa 1892
Provenance
Anonymous sale; Bonhams, Knightsbridge, 19 March 1992, lot 136.
Exhibited
Sheffield, Mappin Art Gallery; and Wolverhampton, Central Art Gallery, 14 October - 19 November 1978, no. 38.
Special notice
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Clare Keiller
Clare Keiller

Lot Essay

This highly-impressionistic sketch is a study of the female model in Waterhouse's painting of 1893 entitled A Naiad (private collection). It anticipates his masterpiece of three years later Hylas and the Nymphs (1896, Manchester City Gallery), which depicts Hylas, a companion of Hercules, who becomes bewitched by a group of mesmerisingly beautiful water-nymphs who lure him into a pool to his death. In A Naiad, however, the nymph appears to be far more innocent and investigative as she climbs out of a woodland stream, with water-lily leaves woven into her hair, entranced by the sleeping figure of a young man. The Greek poet Hesiod wrote of naiads initiating youths sexually; in the finished version, a union of spirit and mortal appears imminent because goats-symbols the god of sensual abandon, Dionysus-observe the approach, and because the boy wears Dionysus’s feline skin.

In ancient pastoral and Romantic poetry, a naiad was a nymph who lived in the water. Naiads were associated with Pan, the raucous, goat-legged god of woods and ruler of primeval Arcadia; as suggested by his name (‘all’), Pan permeated a blissful world shared by humans, animals, plants and supernatural beings. Through the nineteenth century, a rising tide of Pan-related art and literature signalled the Romantic resistance to the austerity of modern Christianity, science and alienation from simple pleasures of the land.

We are grateful to Peter Trippi for his help in preparing this catalogue entry.

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