J.W. Waterhouse

Hmmm....I have my doubts but I would suggest posting some photo's here on this forum and see what people think. If they are genuine then I'm sure you'll get all the help you need.

Kind regards,

Jim

PS. I think Hylas is in Montreal at the moment but it usually housed in Manchester.

It would be wonderful if these turned out to be genuine, but bear in mind they could be painted copies - or even deliberate forgeries.
I would send pictures of the paintings to a Waterhouse expert like Peter Trippi - or have them assessed by the experts at Christies.
As a first step you could post photos of the paintings here as Jim suggested. There are some very knowledgable people on this forum.

By the way Jim. as far as I know, Hylas didn't go to Montreal so I presume it's back in Manchester.

Renee, a photographer can't tell you who did a painting - sometimes art experts can't tell!  But if you post the photos we might be of some help.

Ness

 Renee - you can email photos to jww@artmagick.com  Also, Peter Trippi (the Waterhouse expert) is very approachable and can be contacted via Fine Art Connossieur magazine http://www.fineartconnoisseur.com/contactus.asp 

Two thoughts, both Hylas and the Nymphs and Echo and Narcissus were very well known during Waterhouse's lifetime. Student artists would have copied them in situ - see the story of Danae as an example. 
http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/articles/danae-in-colour/

Modern day reproductions are very common - e.g. there is an artists' village in China (Dafen) that specialises in producing handpainted oil reproductions of out of copyright paintings:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dafen_(town_of_painting_replicas) 

In any case, good luck with your research into your pictures!

Thank you everyone for all of the input, The curator from the exhibition Montreal is coming to  our house to view them as she has seen the signatures through photo and deemed them original. Her voice was shaking on the phone and she said they are interested in purchasing the 2 paintings. My family knows nothing about Art or what they are worth and we have had them in our posession for a long time.  It's nice to get suprises like this once in awhile.
thanks agian everyone for the input :)

 Hi Renee

It's very exciting news that these may in fact be genuine Waterhouse paintings which haven't been seen before. Please keep us informed on how it goes.

(Coincidentally I am flying to Montreal today to visit the exhibition)

Good luck
James

I'm SO curious as to what you have. Did you get a visit from the curator yet? Which one was it and what did she say? Where did these paintings come from and can you post pictures here or somewhere we can see them?

another pic of the signature (low quality)

for some reason it wont let me post the pics?

hi - could you email the photos to jww@artmagick.com and i'll post them here. Sorry for the inconvenience :(

 Where are these pictures going to appear? If you're going to send  pictures, the signature would be the very least useful thing to look at. Anybody could fake that! Let's see some hands, feet, or heads. If you have the real thing, that's what's going to prove it.

Have we had any luck with seeing these images? I'd be very interested in seeing the complete pictures. The recent Consulting the Oracle picture was very interesting and no doubt these would be just as informative.

The framing would be interesting to see and perhaps one method of determining the authenticity of the works. If the paintings have been packed away it is unlikely they have replaced frames.... which would mean they would be two quite different styles of frame.

As David says the hands or heads would be an effective way of determining authenticity. In the case of Hylas and the Nymphs the follage would also be a give away as JW did not vary his approach here anywhere near as much as he did with hand, face and foot.

Cheers
Neil

 No pictures yet? In all the documentation on Waterhouse's work, there isn't any duplication. The only time a subject appears in the same way twice is when there's a study, and even then it's rough or fragmentary and always a different size. I can't see him making extra copies for sale. Then, add to that having them disappear for a hundred years. In any case, pictures would be fun.

 Thinking again, There was Consulting the Oracle. It's a smaller size but it was done as a copy for an extra sale. It was much earlier, but who knows?

Your probably quite correct that these are unlikely to be copies made to order by JW. The client would have had to order the copy and then JW would have to borrow the original back to copy from.

In the case of Hylas this would seem unlikely unless documented by the Manchester Museum, as the only owner of the work, which should be easy to trace. The other possibility that the copy was ordered while the original was beinging painted is unlikely given JW was unable to finish it on time for the Summer 1896 exhibition.

Echo likewise has had one owner and JW would have had to borrow it to paint a copy. There should be documentation at the Walker to confirm such a loan. But that is nice theory, the quality of record keeping at galleries is not always good.

Making copies of this sort was quite common, Leighton appears to have made copies when asked, which probably made it ok for every other RA.

 Yes, I was hoping to be convinced, but it certainly appears to be a stained and faded print, whether or not it's on canvas. 

Thanks Julia
The strong frontal lighting makes it hard to determine of the colour is being washed out. The fact that the flower in Echo's hair and the red garments show as light in value indicates that this is a faded print (red should show as a dark colour even in a strange lighting like this). The frame is a relatively recent one. This is not the kind of frame that would be used when Echo was painted, it looks like a recent print frame. The lack of damage and the excessive surface splitting point to this. The second point against it being anything but a print is the staining, I've yet to see an oil painting that discolours in this way, though exposure to damp might make it possible (but the canvas would have to be rotten behind, and there is no apparent deformation of the camvas). The third point I'd make is that there is no variation in the details between the original and this image, as we have seen in Consulting the Oracle he made changes to suite the size of the new work.

The second photo seems to contain colour but this is unlike the original. The signature appears to be in exactly the same position as the original and scaled down to be identical with the original. I doubt the signature would be replicated by JW in this way.

From these two photos even an amature like me would have to conclude that the work is not a JW painting. If I'm prooved wrong I won't mind, at all, having egg on my face.

Cheers
Neil

 I have to agree with the above comments. It looks like this is identical to the known 'Echo and Narcissus painting. I've used Photoshop to overlay the original with the photo supplied and there is no variation at all even in the foliage, so I can only surmise that it is a print of some kind. Of course Waterhouse may have used a 'cartoon' of some sort to make a duplicate, but I'm not sure that it's ever been documented whether he ever did this else where.

(I've tried to attach my Photoshop image but it doesn't display here)

Hi James,
Sorry - there's a problem attaching images to existing threads but it does get uploaded ok to the server, and here is the link:
http://www.johnwilliamwaterhouse.com/assets/images/content/member-images/29632/forum/FDYUKWDFKATTIYLDVN.jpg

-julia.

To support James view that the images would not be perfect cartoons I've done the same as James but with the Consulting the Orcale images. They are not a perfect overlay.

I have the impression that JW either used a photo to draw from or copied the image while the original was infront of him. Neither of these techniques would make it possible to copy with the degree of accuracy shown.

To get a copy accuracy as shown in James photo would require a projector and slide (even then it would be very difficult to achieve a perfect overlay). In JWs life time I doubt he would have had access to this technology. I've used this technique in making my Danae copy and certainly did not achieve one hundred percent accuracy in the overlay.

Cheers
Neil

There would have been no good reason for a fine artist to do exact copies, though, if you look at the two paintings of Tristan and Isolde, you can see Nino was capable of coming very, very close (the Isolde image) when he wished to do a variation.

Your quite right Ness, there would be no reason to make an exact copy, nor I would think there would be any intention on JWs part to do so.

When it comes to variations I very much like the Danaides. One of my favourite JW works, in either variation 04 0r 06.

Thanks for pointing out Tristam and Isolde, I havent looked at the late paintings very much , I'll have to look in more detail.