In December 2008 the Groninger Museum will present the largest retrospective of the work of John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) that has ever been organized. The exhibition will display a great number of paintings and drawings and sketchbooks, and has been organized in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. Many splendid works come from Australia, Taiwan and Canada, and have not previously been on show in Europe.

 

Waterhouse was born in Rome to British parents, both of whom were painters, but the family soon moved to London. When still young, Waterhouse assisted in the studio of his father, where he developed his interest in painting, sculpture, and antiquity. In 1870, he was admitted as a student to the Royal Academy of Arts. He made his name during the 1870s and 1880s with startingly original, often melancholy, pictures drawn from Greek and Roman antiquity.

By the 1890s, Waterhouse was renowned throughout the British Empire, and at the World's Fairs, for his richly coloured, emotionally charged scenes of beautiful young women. Drawn from Ovid, Keats, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Shelley, and Dante, Waterhouse's scenes celebrate the passionate interconnections of women, water, nature, love, and death, often with occultist subtexts that suggest his fascination with the underworld. Among these compelling scenes are Ophelia, Circe, Hylas and the Nymphs, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and Echo and Narcissus.

Today Waterhouse is often called a 'late Pre-Raphaelite', but this ignores the fact that he was also a modern artist fully aware of the exciting artistic innovations taking in place in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century. He felt at ease with the enchanted world of myths, legends, poetry, and music, but was also inspired by the looser tones of French Impressionism and theatre. Waterhouse's passion for beauty lives on in the marvellous paintings that he left behind, many of which will be on show in the Groninger Museum.

Compilers of the exhibition
Guest curators Peter Trippi (author of the monograph J.W. Waterhouse, dating from 2002, and former director of the Dahesh Museum of Art, New York), Elizabeth Prettejohn (Professor of History of Art, University of Bristol), Robert Upstone (Curator of Modern British Art, Tate Britain), and Patty Wageman (acting Director of the Groninger Museum) are responsible for the composition of the exhibition. Stijn ten Hoeve (Groninger Museum) is the producer.

Catalogue
The above-mentioned team of curators will also issue a comprehensive, fully illustrated catalogue which will be published in Dutch, English and French editions. This catalogue will contain substantial contributions and new research material. The catalogue will be published in mid-December.