Echo and Narcissus, John William Waterhouse

Reproduction on museum paper of a painting by John William Waterhouse

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John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) was an English painter known for his depictions of classical mythology, historical events, and literary themes. He was born and raised in Rome, Italy, but spent most of his career in London, where he became associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists who rejected the conventions of academic painting and sought to revive the styles and techniques of early Italian Renaissance art.

Lamia was inspired by John Keats’s celebrated poem of 1820. Set in the wild hills of ancient Greece during an ‘evening dim at moth time’, the poem speaks of a young charioteer who hearing a soft voice calling – ‘a maid more beautiful than [any] ever with twisted braid’ – falls inextricably in love with her. He is unaware that this vision is in reality a monstrous half-serpent, who metamorphoses into a woman’s form to prey on young men.

The intensity of the young knight’s gaze draws the viewer into Waterhouse’s painting, Lamia kneels below him, one hand on his and the other resting on his armplate, the only visual clue to her nature captured in the glimmering moulted snake-skin draped about her, its peacock tinges drawn from Keat’s description.