JOHN WILLIAM WATERHOUSE
1849-1917
Romantic British, Victorian Era, Painter and Fine Arts Educator and Member of The
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB)
Artistically and
stylistically influenced the following painters and art periods;
Early
Renaissance,
Byzantine Style,
Gothic era,
Frederick Leighton, William
Holman Hunt and
John Everett
Millais
Education - studied under his father, Waterhouse senior and later at the Royal Academy in London, England
cause of death - cancer
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The term Pre-Raphaelites refers to High Renaissance artist Raphael. Some members of the PRB referred to Raphael's work utter rubbish and criticized his decadent themes and depraved lifestyle. Raphael died of syphilis and was known as a drunkard and carouser. They took particular issue with Raphael's leering cherubs and sneering angels. John Ruskin, famous Victorian Art Critic and major influence on the PRB warned "We live in an age of base conceit and baser servility—an age whose intellect is chiefly formed by pillage, and occupied in desecration; one day mimicking, the next destroying, the works of all the noble persons who made its intellectual or art life possible to it:—an age without honest confidence enough in itself to carve a cherry-stone with an original fancy, but with insolence enough to abolish the solar system, if it were allowed to meddle with it. In the midst of all this, you have to become lowly and strong" Dante Rossetti and the other (PRB) artists embraced the artistic style of Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Paolo Veneziano, Andrea del Verrocchio and Giotto Bondone. The (PRB) felt that these painters infused their works with drama, godliness and sacred themes.
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB) was founded in 1848. The most important artist was a handsome and charming painter named Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Rossetti and his chums, John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt, rejected Neoclassical and High Renaissance art and embraced the spiritually infused works of the Early Renaissance, Byzantine Style and Gothic painters. They sought to created a new artistic style using biblical, mythological, and literary imagery as the subjects of their art-works. Their paintings often contain obscure visual symbols and secret riddles.
The idealistic Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painters wanted to change the world with their art, much like the hippies of the 1960s. They scorned the pretentious conventionality of the Victorian era. They sought a return to spirituality, courtliness, brotherly love and religious piousness. They rebelled against the unbridled materialism and rampant hypocrisy that was typical of the Victorian middle and upper classes. Many of the (PRB) members would spend weekends out in the woods communing with nature and God.
John William
Waterhouse's
favorite
subject matter
mythology
Arthurian legends
femme fatale
Italian themes
classical themes
historical themes
literary themes
mermaids
wood nymphs
Writers who influenced John William Waterhouse
Goethe
Edward Bulwer-Lytton
John Keats
Shakespeare
Coventry Patmore
Charles Dickens
Tennyson
Dinah Maria Mulock
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