Circe was the daughter of Helios the sun god and was an immensely powerful witch who lived on the Island of Aeaea. She was described by various classical writers, most notably Homer who called her a goddess. In all the legends she is described transforming her enemies, or those who refused her love, into animals, birds or monsters. Homer described how many of Circe’s victims, turned into wolves or lions, prowled about the stone-built house in which she lived and where she worked on a huge loom. These animals were never dangerous, but rather fawned on all visitors. When Odysseus came to Aeaea his men were immediately turned into swine. Fortunately Odysseus had learnt from Hermes how to overcome Circe’s magic by making her swear, while under the influence of a herbal drug, not to harm him. Odysseus spent a year with Circe and was her lover. She returned his men to him and when he left her she advised him on the next stage of his journey into the realm of Hades where he was to consult the spirits of the dead.
Various versions of this subject exist; an alternative title of The Sorceress has been given to them on occasions, but the attributes of Circe, her accompanying wild beasts (here leopards but in another version bears), and her loom, seen on the right-hand side of the picture, make the mythological subject of the painting clear. Burne-Jones had previously treated the subject of Circe.

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Shortly before he died in 1917, the late Pre-Raphaelite J.W. Waterhouse was developing two oil sketches of approximately the same size: a three-figure composition acquired by the Dahesh Museum of Art (New York) in 1997 (fig. 1) , and the present single-figure “close-up.”
Together these canvases reflect Waterhouse’s late interest in the spiritualised love celebrated by the Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) in his three-part La Divina Commedia. In his final years, as he endured the liver cancer that would ultimately kill him,Waterhouse became evermore fascinated with the passionate narratives that had captivated the early Pre-Raphaelites, especially Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882). We see this in the large canvases now at the Lady Lever Art Gallery-both based on Boccaccio’s Il Decameron – and also in the 1916 double treatments of Malory’s Tristram and Isolde and Shakespeare’s The Tempest. All feature the distinctive red-haired model with whom Waterhouse worked for decades, and the present picture offers a particularly pleasing focus on her profile before a flowering tree that complements her opulent cape.

The female figure in the Dante sketches has traditionally been described as Beatrice, but this now appears to be incorrect. The composition of the Dahesh painting clearly shows the kneeling figure of Dante (immediately recognisable by his characteristic headdress, with lappets over the ears) with two standing figures on one side of a stream, facing a female figure carrying flowers on the other side. This arrangement corresponds closely to the scene in Dante’s Purgatorio, Canto XXVIII, where Dante sees Matilda gathering flowers and singing on the farther bank of the stream of Lethe. At this point in the narrative, which Waterhouse knew well, Dante is accompanied by his guides, Virgil and Statius, who must be the two standing figures. Thus the woman in both paintings cannot represent Beatrice (who does not appear until Canto XXX, after Virgil has disappeared, and who does not carry flowers).

The episode of Matilda gathering flowers relates logically to Waterhouse’s long-standing interest in women gathering flowers. Many (if not all) seem to be related to the mythological story of Persephone, who was abducted and swept into the underworld by Hades while she gathered flowers in the vale of Enna. Indeed, Dante explicitly connects the scene of Matilda gathering flowers with the story of Persephone (Canto XXVIII, lines 49-51).

It is typical of Waterhouse’s decorum that he focused on this episode of Dante’s epic, avoiding more sensational moments that captivated many of his contemporaries, such as the eternal torment of the adulterous lovers, Paolo and Francesca. Still waters run deep, of course, and we can be sure that Waterhouse felt quite strongly about Dante’s poetry and his views on love.

Not surprisingly, both of the Dante pictures remained in Waterhouse’s St John’s Wood studio after his death. They were sold separately at Christie’s in 1926 when his widow, Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse, dispersed the contents of the studio. Both are enjoyable today not only for their beauty and intellectual significance, but also for revealing how Waterhouse built up his surfaces, first drawing the composition with fluid black paint and then gradually laying in the flesh, flowers, drapery, trees, and landscape.

– From Christie’s catalogue.

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In his later work J.W. Waterhouse wholly embraced the poetic imagination of the Pre-Raphaelites. To this he brought a broad handling and loose brushwork which has been credited to the influence of French painters such as Bastien-Lepage. 
Penelope’s legendary marital fidelity was recorded in Homer’s epic poem, ‘The Odyssey’. For many years, her husband Odysseus had been absent at the siege of Troy. Pressed to make a second marriage, she stalls for time, telling the crowds of suitors that they must wait until she has finished weaving a shroud for her father-in-law. During the day she works at her weaving and at night, still convinced that Odysseus will return, she undoes all her day’s work.

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According to Peter Trippi’s biography Waterhouse closely associated women with the beauty, simplicity and decay of flowers and saw them both as vessels of the seeds of new growth. This study was made at a time when ‘flower-women’ assumed a particular significance for Waterhouse. Between 1908 and 1914 he painted a series of images of women and flowers such as ‘Gather Ye Rosebuds while Ye May’ and ‘The Soul of the Rose’.

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During the adventure of the Argonauts, Jason put ashore at Colchis where he met Medea, the daughter of Aeetes, and was bewitched by her beauty. Aeetes, the King of Colchis, obstructed Jason’s quest for the golden fleece by setting him an impossible task, but Medea, being in love with him, helped him perform it by magic and escaped with him to Greece. Overcome by wrath, Aeetes pursued her and, in an effort to delay his advances, Medea murdered her brother, strewing his mutilated limbs in her father’s path. On their arrival at Iolcos, Medea rejuvenated Jason’s father Aeson by boiling him with magic herbs but her evil trickery forced them to flee to Corinth, where Jason deserted her for Glauce. Medea took revenge by slaughtering their children and poisoning her rival.

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Stylistically, Waterhouse has been associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, through his depiction of dreamy women. However, he was in fact working in a later era and his art differed widely from that of the original Brotherhood in its lack of moral seriousness.
The Danaides in Greek mythology were the fifty daughters of King Danaus of Argos, who were all married on a single occasion to fifty suitors. As instructed by their father, all but one of them murdered their husbands on their wedding night. As a result, they were condemned to an afterlife of unending labour, having to draw water from a well and pour it into a vessel from which it continually escaped.

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