The mystic wood is a late work by Waterhouse, dated at c.1910 by Waterhouse’s biographer, Dr Anthony Hobson, and at c.1914-17 by Peter Trippi, the author of a 2002 monograph on the artist. While it remained unfinished at the time of his death, the work is in an advanced stage of development and captures much of what was typical of the artist’s style and choice of subject. His manner of working directly onto the canvas and adding broad tonal washes of thinned paint, without ‘squaring-up’ a preparatory drawing, creates a work which remains ‘alive’ despite its incomplete state. This vigorous style contrasted sharply with the Victorian painters of the previous generation such as Alma-Tadema and Frederick Leighton, where a very high degree of ‘finish’ was paramount to their success. Waterhouse’s method is more akin to the plein air naturalism of the French painter Jules Bastien-Lepage (1848-84) and the Cornwall-based Newlyn School, which included Stanhope Forbes (represented in the Queensland Art Gallery Collection by The village industry 1908).

Hobson has defined Waterhouse as a ‘Romantic Classicist’ and argues against his inclusion as a member of the pre-Raphaelite painters such as Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones. The most recently mounted retrospective of Waterhouse presented by the Groninger Museum, Amsterdam ‘JW Waterhouse (1849–1917), The Modern Pre-Raphaelite’ (December 2008 – May 2009), is the first major exhibition of the artist’s work since 1978. Its rationale draws on and acknowledges both the pre-Raphaelite fascination with medievalism and the bright palette of Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and Waterhouse’s sympathy with the technical explorations of modern French painting.

Waterhouse’s subjects were consistently drawn from the grand mythological and classical narratives of Homer and Ovid, the literary and poetical works of Shakespeare, Shelley, Keats and Alfred Lord Tennyson. What distinguishes The mystic wood however is its lack of an obvious historical, literary or classical narrative. A summary of the dress, gesture and age of the figures suggests no definitive story and the appearance of a young boy is rare in Waterhouse’s work. Here he is shown hiding behind the dress of one of two young women accompanied by what appears to be an older woman, a ‘nurse’ perhaps. The two younger women are captivated and engrossed with a white stag which appears to be leading and beckoning them onwards into a forest. In Celtic mythology a white stag is often interpreted as the harbinger of death that the Otherworld is near. In other myths, both pagan and Christian, the white stag is equated with the unicorn or in Arthurian legend, as a symbol of mankind’s elusive spiritual quest.

While its specific meaning remains unclear, we could assume that the deliberate rendering of the animal in white suggests associations with both purity and death and that within the spiritual iconography of Victorian England, its symbolism would have been more resonant. During the 1900s there was a shift in Waterhouse’s work away from myth and legend towards the interpretation of poetic works, romance and mystery drawn from Chaucer, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Shelly and Dante as well as pictures of imaginative fantasy. The mystic wood appears to lean more in this direction and even within the range of the attributed circa dates, the painting was commenced late in the artist’s life at a time when the popularity of his work had declined considerably. It was produced as Victorian England was transformed into modern Britain a robust, industrial nation on the eve of World War One.

The previous decade in England, like much of fin de siècle Europe, had been characterised by a resurgence of interest in spiritualism, the occult, mysticism and magic. Such interest has been variously interpreted as a retreat into enchantment in the face of rapid social change or a reaction to the waning influence of conventional religion. Aspects of this merged easily with the Victorian retelling of classical narratives and Waterhouse’s tendency to interpret and present the less obvious aspects of the stories also provided for a more arcane interpretation.

The Order of the Golden Dawn is perhaps the best-known of the spiritual orders in Britain in the late nineteenth century. Established in 1888 by the Freemasons, the order attracted a considerable membership by the 1890s and included physicians, writers, scientists, actors, poets and artists. The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, actress and theatre director, Florence Farr and the notorious magician, Alistair Crowley are among the Order’s best known members. Peter Trippi has pointed to Waterhouse’s interest in the occult on the evidence of several works. The scarcity of biographical detail on Waterhouse’s life however, leaves such speculation in the realm of conjecture.

Waterhouse had an ability to define a particular episode from a repertoire of literary, mythical and poetical genres while imbuing the figures, almost always women, with a contemporary presence. The fact that his paintings were animated by women that, while idealised, one might encounter on the high street, appealed to Victorian audiences and buyers.

The mystic wood is indeed a dark and gloomy glade with no hint of celestial light. A lambent reflection from the surface of a stream in the distance is the only vestige of illumination. What may be ancient oaks or elms create a canopy of darkness for what could be a symbolic passage to another realm. According to another revelatory text of the late nineteenth century, first published in 1890 — James G Frazer’s (1854-1941) The Golden Bough the forest was a primeval metaphor for a return to the beginning. Much of Waterhouse’s work addressed quasi-pagan, pantheist themes where mortals and animals, nymphs, pans and lower deities played out narratives of desire, loss and transformation. This image poses a small mortal boy in the protection of three women — two of which are painted from Waterhouse’s favourite (and still unknown) model on a threshold of both fear and fascination. The white stag and its attendant symbology, is a central protagonist in the drama. Is it possible to read this mysterious picture as an allegory of the artist’s life? Is it possibly both prescient of an imagined afterlife and a kind of pictorial summary of Waterhouse’s infatuation with fleeting youth and beauty as a melancholy trope?

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These scenes of medieval storytelling, painted in 1916 and 1917, distil many of the qualities of Waterhouse’s work. Their fanciful subject, colour and attention to detail echo the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. Their composition, elegance and figures remind us of works by the Victorian classicists. But, perhaps more significantly, these works demonstrate the traditionalist preferences of their collector, William Hesketh Lever.

Like many of the Pre-Raphaelite artists whom he admired, Waterhouse was interested in medieval literature; indeed perhaps one of his most famous works is his interpretation of the medieval subject The Lady of Shalott, now in Tate Britain. In The Decameron and The Enchanted Garden, Waterhouse gathers inspiration from the great Italian medieval writer Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375).  Boccaccio’s Decameron was written in about 1350 during the outbreak of the Plague in Florence. It relates the story of 10 young people (3 men and 7 women) who fled into the countryside to escape the ravages of the disease. Each member of the group took it in turns to be ‘king’ or ‘queen’ for the day choosing activities including storytelling by each member of the group. Over a ten-day period 100 different stories are told covering a myriad of themes and motifs including wit, love, fortune, deception, sex, religion, cruelty and death.

In The Decameron we see most of the members of the group sitting, listening intently to the latest tale. In The Enchanted Garden, Waterhouse illustrates one tale specifically. This is the fifth story from the tenth day. It concerns Dianora, wife of Gilberto, who is pursued by Ansaldo,whose fame for feats of arms and courtesy was spread far and wide. Dianora is exasperated by Ansaldo’s insistence so she devises what she believes is an impossible task in order that he will prove his love. If he does complete the task she will be his lover. Dianora asks Ansaldo to produce a May garden, full of blooms, in January. Assisted by a magician, Ansaldo achieves this seemingly impossible task leaving Dianora distraught. In an anxious state, she explains to her husband the bargain she has made and he, conscious of that Ansaldo has fulfilled his part of the bargain advises her that the agreement must be kept. On hearing of Dianora’s honesty, Ansaldo decides to release her from the obligation.  Waterhouse has chosen the great moment of discovery and realisation by Dianora for this painting.

John William Waterhouse was born in Rome in 1849. The family returned to England in the late 1850s and from an early age the young Waterhouse assisted his father, also a painter, in his studio.  By the 1870s Waterhouse was training at the Royal Academy schools in London. His early works showed the influence of the great Victorian classical artists such as Frederic Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema.  Later he became interested in Pre-Raphaelite painting, especially the works of Edward Burne-Jones. Eventually, these two styles merged to create Waterhouse’s atmospheric but academic pictures.

The Enchanted Garden was unfinished when Waterhouse died in 1917, but was purchased by William Hesketh Lever from the artist’s widow.  It was, she stated, a companion to The Decameron that Lever had acquired in the previous year.  The paintings were exhibited separately at the Royal Academy in 1916 and 1917 but there were few reviews. These fanciful subjects, and paintings like them, drew little attention from critics during the First World War. Although painted in 1916 and 1917 they were essentially Victorian paintings, the remnants of a passing age. They appealed to Lever and his traditional taste and fitted-in well with his painting collection, a collection that already included works by the Pre-Raphaelites and Victorian classical artists. At a time when he was devising his new art gallery and considering its eventual contents it is no surprise that Lever added them to his collection. Perhaps what is a surprise is that The Enchanted Garden was the last contemporary painting Lever bought; he turned his attention to buying historic works instead.

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It is the third painting by Waterhouse that depicts a scene from the Tennyson poem, “The Lady of Shalott”. The title of the painting is a quotation from the last two lines in the fourth and final verse of the second part of the Tennyson’s poem:

‘But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror’s magic sights,
For often thro’ the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, came from Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead
Came two young lovers lately wed;
‘I am half sick of shadows,’ said
The Lady of Shalott.‘

This painting depicts yet an earlier point in the tale of the Lady of Shalott than that depicted by Waterhouse in his previous two works of 1888 and 1894. The Lady is still confined in her tower, weaving a tapestry, viewing the world outside only through reflections in the mirror behind her. In the painting, the mirror reveals a bridge over a river leading to the walls and towers of Camelot; also visible nearby are a man and a woman, perhaps the “two young lovers lately wed” referred to in Tennyson’s poem. The scene is set shortly before an image of Lancelot appears in the mirror, enticing the Lady out of her tower to her death.

The painting shows the Lady of Shalott resting from her weaving. She wears a red dress, in a room with Romanesque columns. The frame of the loom and the geometric tiles of the floor lead the viewer into the room, where the red, yellow and blue colours inside echo those the more vivid colours outside. The shuttles of the loom resemble boats, foreshadowing the Lady’s later death.

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