Groninger Museum retrospective of Works by Artist John William Waterhouse |
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| Monday, 22 December 2008 00:12 |
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The artist was born in Rome to British parents, but the family returned to London five years later. Even at a very young age, Waterhouse assisted in the studio of his father, where he developed his interest in painting, sculpture and Classical Antiquity. He was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in 1870, and gradually began to make a name for himself with strikingly original and often melancholy pictures inspired by ancient Greece and Rome.  His richly coloured, emotionally charged images of beautiful women brought him renown throughout the British Empire and at the World Expositions of the 1890s and 1900s. His themes, which he took largely from such authors as Ovid, Keats, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Shelley and Dante, reflect his ardent passion for women, water, nature, love and death, frequently with sinister undertones that hint at his fascination with the underworld. His captivating scenes include depictions of Circe, Miranda, The Lady of Shalott, Cleopatra, Lamia, Mariamne, Hylas and the Nymphs, and The Magic Circle. Nowadays Waterhouse is often referred to as a ‘Pre-Raphaelite’, but he was also a representative of the new age, fully aware of the modern artistic innovations occurring in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century. He felt at home in the dream-like world of myths and sagas, but was also inspired by poetry and music, and by the looser brushwork of French Impressionism. Waterhouse’s passion for beauty lives on unmistakably in the marvellous paintings and drawings that he left behind, many of which will be on display in the Groninger Museum. The Groninger Museum aims at a wide audience.With the presentations, which are of national and international significance, the Groninger Museum hopes to amaze and astound visitors and prompt them towards an opinion. Visit : www.groningermuseum.nl/?lan=Engels Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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