Lady of Shalott
The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse is key oil painting which this article discusses in full and looks into why this work has proved so popular in recent years. Waterhouse was a Pre-Raphaelite painter and this art movement helped to push British art into the leading countries involved within 19th century art, having long since trailed behind the likes of France, Spain and Italy.
John William Waterhouse was well respected for his translations of previous literature into full scale oil paintings and in the case of this painting he chose to take extracts from the Lady of Shalott poem which he added to with his own creative mind and painting techniques of the Pre-Raphaelite movement to create this inspiring painting which remains amongst the most popular of all British art over the 19th century.
Within the painting are several candles perched at the front of the boat as the female character makes her way across the river on a path which is deliberately left unclear to help to entice the viewer to want to know more about both her and the route she has decided to take in her boat. Two of the candles are not alight which symbolically tells of the sadness which she is feeling due to the unrequited love that she has for another man, namely Lord Lancelot. She intends on setting sail to find him but the journey was always doomed to end in failure and so there is a slightly melancholic feeling to this painting beyond just the interest of the boat and the well styled background landscape which sits behind it. Despite the sadness, there is a great calming quality to this painting which is why it makes such a suitable framed art print reproduction for the many Waterhouse fans who still exist.
We can conclude that Lady of Shalott helped to lift Waterhouse's career into the upper echelons of the movement in which he was involved and also left a great mark just by itself which still attracts many art fans today thanks to the mythical scene which the artist took from literature and brought to life. Few painters have quite the insight and imagination to do this but it was a common hallmark of Pre-Raphaelite artists to use attractive women in sultry poses like this and this romantic setting was very much in line with what had gone before in both the work of this movement and also specifically the artist's career as well.
John William Waterhouse was well respected for his translations of previous literature into full scale oil paintings and in the case of this painting he chose to take extracts from the Lady of Shalott poem which he added to with his own creative mind and painting techniques of the Pre-Raphaelite movement to create this inspiring painting which remains amongst the most popular of all British art over the 19th century.
Within the painting are several candles perched at the front of the boat as the female character makes her way across the river on a path which is deliberately left unclear to help to entice the viewer to want to know more about both her and the route she has decided to take in her boat. Two of the candles are not alight which symbolically tells of the sadness which she is feeling due to the unrequited love that she has for another man, namely Lord Lancelot. She intends on setting sail to find him but the journey was always doomed to end in failure and so there is a slightly melancholic feeling to this painting beyond just the interest of the boat and the well styled background landscape which sits behind it. Despite the sadness, there is a great calming quality to this painting which is why it makes such a suitable framed art print reproduction for the many Waterhouse fans who still exist.
We can conclude that Lady of Shalott helped to lift Waterhouse's career into the upper echelons of the movement in which he was involved and also left a great mark just by itself which still attracts many art fans today thanks to the mythical scene which the artist took from literature and brought to life. Few painters have quite the insight and imagination to do this but it was a common hallmark of Pre-Raphaelite artists to use attractive women in sultry poses like this and this romantic setting was very much in line with what had gone before in both the work of this movement and also specifically the artist's career as well.
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