ne was a daughter of Minos, king of Crete.  She defied her father by helping his prisoner, Theseus, who had been imprisoned in the Minotaur’s labrynth.  Ariadne gave him the thread that he used to find his way to freedom after killing the monster.  In helping Theseus, she risked the anger and retribution of her father — in a strange familial twist so often found in Greek myth, the Minotaur was also Ariadne’s half brother.
After securing his freedom, Theseus took Ariadne with him in order to make her his bride.  They stopped on the island of Naxos where Theseus’ memory was clouded and he abandoned her there.

Ariadne, like the Lady of Shalott and Mariana, is seemingly doomed to an isolated existence.  However, unlike the Lady of Shalott whose curse came to fruition, Ariadne was rescued by the god Dionysis, who married her. Accounts of Ariadne differ. In one, Dionysis gives her a crown of gems and upon her death, he places her as a constellation in the sky.  Most tales of Ariadne hold that she was given immortality and became a goddess herself, as seen in Hesiod’s Theogeny where she is described as the “wife of Dionysis, whom Zeus made immortal”.

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Miracles, magic and the power of prophecy are common themes in Waterhouse’s art. In this picture he shows a group of seven young girls, sitting in a semicircle round a lamplit shrine, waiting in excitement while the priestess interprets the words of the Oracle.
The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy with the following explanation in the catalogue: ‘The Oracle or Teraph was a human head, cured with spices, which was fixed against the wall, and lamps being lit before it and other rites performed, the imagination of diviners was so excited that they supposed that they heard a low voice speaking future events.’ The setting is probably imaginary, but has an exotic, middle-eastern flavour, derived from the work of artists such as J.F. Lewis (1805-1876), rather than from personal experience. The atmosphere is heady with incense and the priestess gestures to the women to be silent as she strains to interpret the utterings of the mummified head.

Hobson compares the painting’s composition to the shape of a keyhole. As he explains, ‘This refers not to some telescopic view of the scene but to the keyhole shape of the figure grouping, in which a ring of spectators concentrate their attention upon another single figure’ (quoted in Hobson 1989, pp.31-4). The composition, for all its exoticism, is essentially classical. The series of arched windows, the semi-circular design of the floor and the sweep of the marble step set up a rhythm within the painting. This is counterbalanced by the diagonals of the patterned rugs and the leaning body of the priestess, her hand silhouetted against the daylight, streaming through the open window. The women’s varied expressions of apprehension add to the atmosphere of tension as the priestess waits for the oracle to speak.

Contemporary critics remarked on the ‘hysteric awe’ of the semicircle of women seeking the prophecies of the Teraph and the ‘terror’ of the priestess as she ‘interprets its decrees’ (quoted in Hobson 1989, p.34). The Illustrated London Newsfeatured the picture as one of the principal works of the year and reproduced it across two pages of an extra supplement. It was bought by Sir Henry Tate, who included it in his founding bequest to the nation in 1894.

When Waterhouse exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1884, he appended the following description: ‘The Oracle or Teraph was a human head, cured with spices, which was fixed against the wall, and lamps being lit before it and other rites performed, the imagination of diviners was so excited that they supposed that they head a low voice speaking future events’. The priestess motions for silence as she bends forward to catch the mysterious utterances. The setting is probably imaginary, but has an exotic, middle-eastern flavour. – Gallery label, September 2004

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Ophelia is, of course, the potential love interest in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. She famously goes mad after the death of her father, and suffers an untimely death herself after she climbs into a willow tree and a branch breaks, dropping her into a brook in Denmark where she drowns. She was a favorite subject for many nineteenth century artists including Richard Redgrave, John Everett Millais, Arthur Hughes, Thomas Francis Dicksee, and of course, John William Waterhouse.
This particular painting depicts Ophelia lying in a field with a bouquet of freshly picked wildflowers in her hand. In Ophelia’s last scene in the play, after she goes crazy, she is handing out flowers and singing, which this painting is likely in reference to. The stream which she ends up drowning in is visible in the background. Waterhouse was deeply interested in rendering his own interpretations of literary and mythological figures. This piece was the painting that Waterhouse submitted to the Royal Academy of Art in order to graduate.
The Academy recorded notes on “Ophelia” after it was submitted which read:

“Ophelia lying in the grass, with the wild flowers she has gathered in the folds of her dress. In one hand she holds a bunch of buttercups; in her rich brown hair, which half hides her face, is a coronet of daisies; in the background through the willow-stems a stream winds, and swallows fly low in the air.”

Ophelia was a favorite subject of Waterhouse and he painted her three times, in 1889, 1894, and 1910. Waterhouse had planned to paint a fourth in what he called the ‘Ophelia series’. Each version gets the viewer closer to her tragic end. When Waterhouse died, he was actively working on the fourth Ophelia painting. The English composer, Andrew Lloyd Webber, is a huge collector of John William Waterhouse works and Victorian art in general, and his collection includes this 1889 rendition of Ophelia as well as the 1910 version.

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Lady on a Balcony probably dates to c.1889 when Waterhouse is known to have visited the island of Capri, probably funded by the sale of two of his most important pictures Ophelia (Lord Lloyd Webber collection) and The Lady of Shallot (Tate). In 1890 he painted The Orange Gatherers (private collection) a group of Caprese girls harvesting fruit in a similar setting of white-washed walls, citrus trees and vines and At Capri, Alfresco Toilet (Sotheby’s, New York, 20 November 1996, lot 2658). Also from this period is Arranging Flowers (private collection) and Flora (sold in these rooms, 9 December 2008, lot 129) in which Capri provided a suitably sun-bleached setting for classical idylls. Lady on a Balcony is a more direct depiction of life on Capri.

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The Magic Circle was one of Waterhouse’s earliest depictions of a subject that preoccupied him for the rest of his life, the classical sorceress. Here he depicted her clad in a blue gown wrought with figures of dancing pagan warriors, a curve-bladed knife in one hand and a wand in the other with which she is drawing the eponymous circle around her flaming cauldron. It is evening and she is in the wasteland below a towering cliff upon which is a citadel or cluster of tombs. She is accompanied by a group of crows and a toad and a serpent is entwining her neck – symbols of the occult. She has poppy-flowers and herbs piled beside the brazier and caught in the belt of her dress – to be burnt as offerings to accompany her incantations. In the background is a cave within which two shrouded figures are watching her cast her spell.

The larger version of The Magic Circle was a critical success at the Royal Academy exhibition of 1886, where it was considered to be one of the best pictures and was purchased for the national collection by the Trustees of the Chantrey Bequest. It was Waterhouse’s first exhibit after being made an Associate of the Royal Academy and was an affirmation of his increasing international acclaim.

In 1884, two years before Waterhouse painted The Magic Circle he exhibited Consulting the Oracle (Tate) a macabre work, in which a female soothsayer is interpreting the words of a severed head to a group of women gathered in a circle around her. This painting had an Orientalist setting but was painted during a period in Waterhouse’s career when he was interested in depicting scenes of classical history and domesticity. Whilst The Magic Circle presents a dramatic image of fire and sacrifice, it depicts a scene that would have been commonplace in the ancient Greek and Roman world, where sorceresses and mystics were thought to be able to appease the gods, change fortunes and bring about love unions. This witch is not necessarily evil and her incantations may just as easily be to bring about a good harvest than to cause someone ill. It is only modern interpretations of this type of image that bring associations with devil-worship.

It is tempting to speculate that the raven-haired model for The Magic Circle was the same woman who posed a year later for Mariamne in 1887 (private collection) where she was cast in the role of the wronged woman condemned to death by the jealousy of Salome and the weakness of Herod. She was probably also the model for Cleopatra (private collection) painted in 1888 for the series for depictions of Shakespearean heroines, commission by The Graphic magazine.

A later inscription on the reverse of the canvas suggests that this picture was a study for the painting at Tate Britain. However, the high level of finish and the existence of another, smaller and loosely painted picture of the same composition suggests that they were produced as versions, probably worked upon concurrently. This was often Waterhouse’s practice and he would produce several versions of a picture, one of which would be worked up as the prime version.  The only picture that should probably be described as a study is the wash drawing exhibited at the Dudley Gallery in 1881 (private collection) which proves that the subject had been suggested to Waterhouse at least five years earlier than the oil paintings.

– From Sotheby’s catalogue.

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