Sweet Summer

Date created: 1912

This painting was auctioned for 265,500 pounds at Sothebys (London) in June 1998. The following text is taken from their catalogue:

This lovely painting of a girl lying on a lawn beside a pool is of the loosely classical but essentially subjectless type that John William Waterhouse, along with other Romantic artists of his generation, turned to in the early years of the present century. The ancient world is suggested to the spectator by the fountain - which consists of lion heads from the mouth of each of which a jet of water flows - and the marble pavement and column bases of a temple, seen at the top edge of the composition. Sweet Summer represents the ongoing Aesthetic tradition, pioneered by artists such as Edward Burne-Jones and Albert Moore in the 1860s. The senses are used to evoke the mood of the model. She is shown holding in her right hand a rose, the scent of which seems to pervade the scene; likewise the plash of water from the fountain fills the air with its gentle sound. Cast down on the grass is a fan, which indicates the warmth and oppressive stillness of a summer's day. In fact the heat is such that the girl has partially removed her dress, exposing her left arm and her breasts, and thus lending a sensuous character to the image. All of these elements of sight, sound and smell seem to contribute to a feeling of distraction and restlessness on the part of the girl, and as her gaze is far away and she is quite unconscious of the spectator, one must assume that the artist has sought to describe the emotions of unfulfilled love.

Although unrecorded among the artist's works, the composition of Sweet Summer is developed from earlier paintings by Waterhouse. The motif of a girl stretched out on the grass with her left arm held above her head and her knees raised was first explored by the artist in his painting Ophelia of 1889. Among other compositions showing sleeping or waking figures, The Awakening of Adonis (private collection) of c.1900, depends on the same arrangement of the left arm held upwards and resting on the head, while the right is bent at the elbow, and it has been suggested by Dr Anthony Hobson that this treatment derives from Waterhouse's study of the Roman Hellenistic sculpture Ariadne in the Vatican collection. (See The Art and Life of J.W. Waterhouse RA, London, 1980, p.105.)'