Paintings by Waterhouse can now command prices of £1 million or more in the salerooms of London and New York. Works that have been recorded as 'lost' for most of the 20th century have reappeared. An important Waterhouse work has emerged 'from hiding' almost yearly over the past decade.

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The Most Expensive Waterhouse Painting

St Cecilia £6,603,750 (June 2000)

Then and Now

It is well-documented that Victorian art has been undergoing a revival of late as it becomes fashionable again after having been derided by many art critics for most of the 20th century, and the prices currently assigned to Waterhouse's paintings reflect this upturn.

For example, Peter Trippi, in his Waterhouse monograph, lists some historical auction data for Waterhouse's 1894 Ophelia:
1894: £700
1913: £472
1950: £20
1969: £420
1971: £3,000
1982: £75,000
1993: £419,500
2000: £1.6 million

Some British museums sold their Waterhouses, along with other Victorian paintings, in the 1950s and 1960s: the Royal Institution of Cornwall parted company with Pandora. Exeter's Royal Albert Memorial Museum also sold a Waterhouse work.

The Collectors

Who are some of those lucky individuals who own a Waterhouse picture?

Here are a few:

• Andrew Lloyd Webber: probably the best known collector of Waterhouse. His wonderful collection of Victorian art, including several paintings by Waterhouse, was recently on display at the Royal Academy in London. In June 2000, he set a new auction record for Waterhouse (and Victorian art) when he paid £6,603,750 for St. Cecilia.
• Fred and Sherry Ross: this American-based couple own a couple of paintings by Waterhouse. They are very active in promoting Victorian art, and are the owners of the Art Renewal Center.
• Tim Rice: lyricist; owner of five Waterhouse paintings which were on display at the Bowes Museum, Country Durham a couple of years ago.

Former Collectors

• John Schaeffer: an Australian based art collector who sadly had to sell his art collection in 2004. His Waterhouse paintings were included in the recent Love & Death: Art in the Age of Queen Victoria exhibition.
• Seymour Stein: music impresario; he used to own a number of Waterhouse paintings including A Siren and Sleep and his Half-brother Death. These paintings, and others from his vast collection of Pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist and Art Nouveau art, were put up for public auction in December 2003.

BBC Antiques Roadshow

The BBC's Antiques Roadshow TV series has discovered three previously unknown and undocumented works which are now attributed to Waterhouse. All were appraised by London art dealer Peter Nahum:

• At the Coalville show (26 March 1998), Nahum identified a portrait of a woman in a red dress (complete with a glaring hole in the canvas) as an early Waterhouse painting. It was subsequently included in Peter Trippi's recent Waterhouse monograph.
  
• A year earlier, at a show in Lyme Regis (18 July 1997), Nahum identified two paintings as being by Waterhouse, from very early in his career. "Peter Nahum is surprised that the owner should prefer 'a student copy' of a rather sugary cupid to the more interesting, almost symbolist, head on the other side."
  

Research Waterhouse's auction records at ArtPrice

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