This painting is a realisation of the tragic scene which concludes Alfred Tennyson’s poem The Lady of Shalott. Having defied the terms of her confinement, the heroine sets sail for Camelot and certain death. The picture may also have been intended as a tribute to Millais’s Ophelia, with broad impressionist brushwork replacing the precise treatment of the earlier Pre-Raphaelite work. Draped over the boat is the tapestry the Lady wove during her imprisonment. Beside it are three candles, often used to symbolise life. Two have blown out suggesting that her life will end soon, as she floats down the river.
Detailed Description The picture illustrates the following lines from part IV of Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’:
And down the river’s dim expanse Like some bold seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance – With glassy countenance Did she look to Camelot. And at the closing of the day She loosed the chain, and down she lay; The broad stream bore her far away, The Lady of Shalott.
Tennyson’s poem, first published in 1832, tells of a woman who suffers under an undisclosed curse. She lives isolated in a tower on an island called Shalott, on a river which flows down from King Arthur’s castle at Camelot. Not daring to look upon reality, she is allowed to see the outside world only through its reflection in a mirror. One day she glimpses the reflected image of the handsome knight Lancelot, and cannot resist looking at him directly. The mirror cracks from side to side, and she feels the curse come upon her. The punishment that follows results in her drifting in her boat downstream to Camelot ‘singing her last song’, but dying before she reaches there. Waterhouse shows her letting go the boat’s chain, while staring at a crucifix placed in front of three guttering candles. Tennyson was a popular subject for artists of this period, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites. Waterhouse’s biographer Anthony Hobson relates that the artist owned a copy of Tennyson’s collected works, and covered every blank page with pencil sketches for paintings.
The landscape setting is highly naturalistic; the painting was made during Waterhouse’s brief period of plein-air painting. The setting is not identified, although the Waterhouses frequently visited Somerset and Devon. The model is traditionally said to be the artist’s wife. Waterhouse’s sketchbook contains numerous pencil studies for this and the painting of the same title made six years later (1894, Leeds City Art Gallery). This second work shows the Lady at the moment she looks out of the window and the curse is fulfilled. Waterhouse also made sketches of the final scenes in which the boat bearing the Lady floats into Camelot.
The Lady of Shalott is one of the original paintings from the gift of Sir Henry Tate.
Credit: Presented by Sir Henry Tate 1894