The eternal return of the enchantresses: Waterhouse and the myth of the femme fatale
Imagine an exhibition hall bathed in golden light, filtering through the tall windows of a London museum. On the walls, women with fiery hair and gazes both melancholic and defiant seem to watch you from another century. Their dresses—emerald green or blood red—ripple like liquid flames. One holds a golden cup, another a shattered mirror, a third sings perched on a rock while a man drowns in her eyes. These figures are not mere portraits: they are incarnated myths, fatal women painted by John William Waterhouse, an artist who captured the very essence of seduction and tragedy.
By Artedusa
••10 min readWhy do these works, created over a century ago, continue to haunt us? Perhaps because they don’t just recount ancient legends, but also the fears and desires of an era when women were only beginning to emancipate themselves. Perhaps because Waterhouse, that discreet and meticulous painter, gave his enchantresses such a tangible presence that they seem ready to step out of the frame and draw you into their world. Or perhaps, quite simply, because beauty, when tinged with danger, never ages.
01The light that falls on Circe’s shoulders
There is one painting that encapsulates Waterhouse’s art: Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses (1891). The scene unfolds in a palace of marble columns, bathed in a golden light that seems to emanate from the sorceress herself. Circe, dressed in a green gown embroidered with gold, offers a cup to Ulysses, whose face remains in shadow. Behind her, wolves—men she has transformed—prowl, while a peacock, symbol of vanity, spreads its iridescent feathers.
What strikes the viewer is how Waterhouse plays with light. The reflections on the cup, on Circe’s jewels, on the peacock’s wings are rendered with almost photographic precision. Yet this light is not natural: it seems to come from nowhere, as if the sorceress herself were its source. Critics of the time were fascinated by this technique. One wrote, “Waterhouse paints light as if sculpting with sunbeams.” But beyond the technical prowess, it is the ambiguity of Circe’s gesture that intrigues. Is she offering the cup to poison Ulysses, or to initiate him into forbidden knowledge? Her gaze, both tender and imperious, gives no answer.
This ambiguity lies at the heart of Waterhouse’s work. His women are never mere victims or mere executioners: they are both at once. Circe, like most of his heroines, embodies a form of female power that unsettles. At a time when suffragettes marched through the streets of London, when women were beginning to demand the right to vote and study at university, these mythological figures took on a particular resonance. They were both a warning and a celebration: a warning against the dangers of female freedom, but also a celebration of its bewitching beauty.
02The shattered mirror of the Lady of Shalott
If Circe is a sorceress aware of her power, the Lady of Shalott is a prisoner of her own fate. Waterhouse painted this heroine from Tennyson’s poem three times (1888, 1894, 1915), as if he could not bring himself to let go of her story. Each version shows the young woman at the moment she leaves her island, doomed by a curse to die if she looks directly at the outside world.
The most famous of these paintings, from 1888, is a masterpiece of composition. The Lady, dressed in an immaculate white gown, sits in a black boat, her hands resting on an unfinished tapestry. Behind her, three candles burn, symbols of her fading life. The landscape, rendered with almost photographic realism, contrasts with the pallor of her face. But what strikes the viewer most is the shattered mirror at her feet. In the legend, the Lady can only see the world through its reflection. By breaking it, she signs her death warrant—but also her liberation.
Waterhouse spent months painting the details of this work. The threads of the tapestry, the reflections on the water, the folds of the dress: everything is rendered with manic precision. Yet despite this meticulousness, the painting exudes a dreamlike quality, as if the scene were unfolding in another world. “Waterhouse does not paint characters, he paints atmospheres,” wrote a critic in 1888. And it is true: his canvases do not merely tell a story, they create a mood, an emotion.
The Lady of Shalott is perhaps the most tragic figure in his oeuvre. She embodies the cursed artist, doomed to see the world only through a prism. But she is also a metaphor for the female condition in the Victorian era: trapped by society’s expectations, condemned to live in the shadows, until she breaks her chains—at the cost of her life.
03The sirens and the call of the void
Among all of Waterhouse’s fatal women, the sirens are perhaps the most terrifying. In The Siren (1900), a creature half-woman, half-bird perches on a rock, singing to lure a sailor to his doom. Her body, as white as marble, contrasts with the dark waves surrounding her. Her hair, a flaming red, seems to catch fire in the last rays of the sun. But what strikes the viewer most is her gaze: empty, hypnotic, as if she were already elsewhere.
Waterhouse drew inspiration from ancient descriptions of sirens, but he gave them a new dimension. In Homer, they are monstrous creatures, half-woman, half-bird. In Waterhouse’s hands, they are almost human, which makes them all the more dangerous. Their beauty is a weapon, and their song, a promise of death.
The painting is structured like a Greek tragedy. In the foreground, the siren dominates the composition, while the sailor, barely visible, drowns in the waves. In the background, the remnants of a shipwreck are visible: wreckage, bones bleached by salt. Everything in this painting suggests the inevitable. “Waterhouse does not paint death, he paints the attraction of death,” wrote a critic in 1901.
This fascination with the call of the void was not incidental. At the end of the nineteenth century, Europe was obsessed with themes of decadence and the decline of civilizations. The works of Nietzsche, Freud, and Huysmans all spoke of a society in decline, drawn toward its own annihilation. Waterhouse’s sirens are a perfect metaphor for this: they embody the temptation of destruction, the desire to lose oneself in the unknown.
04The secret of colors: how Waterhouse painted his enchantresses
If Waterhouse’s women still fascinate us today, it is also thanks to his exceptional mastery of color. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who used earthy, dark pigments, Waterhouse preferred vivid, luminous tones. His emerald greens, ruby reds, and sapphire blues are rendered with an almost supernatural intensity.
To achieve these effects, he used a technique inherited from the Flemish masters: glazing. This method involves layering transparent coats of paint to create depth and luminosity. For example, to paint Circe’s dress, he would start with a white undercoat, then apply several layers of transparent green, letting each dry in between. The result is a color that seems to vibrate, as if alive.
But Waterhouse did not merely play with colors: he charged them with symbolism. Red, for instance, is often associated with passion and danger. In The Lady of Shalott, the Lady’s red belt immediately draws the eye, like an omen of her tragic end. Green, on the other hand, evokes nature and magic. In Circe Invidiosa (1892), the sorceress’s green dress seems made of leaves and vines, as if she herself were a creature of the forest.
Critics of the time were fascinated by this mastery of color. “Waterhouse does not paint with pigments, he paints with light,” wrote a journalist in 1895. And it is true: his canvases seem bathed in an inner glow, as if his characters were illuminated from within.
05The invisible models: who were the women behind the myths?
Behind every enchantress in Waterhouse’s work lies a real woman, a model who posed for hours in his studio in Primrose Hill. Yet these women remained largely anonymous, erased by the myths they embodied.
One of the most famous was Muriel Foster, a professional model who posed for The Lady of Shalott (1888 and 1915) and The Soul of the Rose (1908). Tall, red-haired, with delicate features, she perfectly matched the Pre-Raphaelite ideal of feminine beauty. But unlike Elizabeth Siddal, Rossetti’s muse, Muriel Foster was never an artist in her own right. She was a silhouette, a face, an inspiration—but never a creator.
Another important model was Waterhouse’s own wife, Esther Kenworthy. A painter herself, she often posed for her husband, notably for Mariana in the South (1897). Yet even in this painting, she is only a melancholic figure, a woman waiting for a love that will never come.
This invisibility of the models reflects a reality of the time: women were often reduced to their appearance, even in the art world. Yet without them, Waterhouse’s paintings would not have that almost supernatural presence. “A Waterhouse painting is like a photograph of the soul,” wrote a critic in 1900. But those souls were never given the right to speak.
06The legacy of the enchantresses: why Waterhouse still haunts us
More than a century after his death, Waterhouse continues to fascinate. His paintings are reproduced on posters, book covers, and album sleeves. Contemporary artists, like illustrator Yuko Shimizu and painter Kehinde Wiley, openly draw inspiration from him. Even cinema and pop music pay him homage: the boat scene in The Lady of Shalott has inspired dozens of music videos, and Circe’s green dress appears in Game of Thrones costumes.
But why do these images still speak to us? Perhaps because they capture something universal: fear and desire, beauty and destruction, the call of the unknown. At a time when women continue to fight for their place in society, Waterhouse’s heroines remain ambivalent symbols. They are both victims and executioners, prisoners and sorceresses.
In 2018, Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs was temporarily removed from the Manchester Art Gallery as part of an exhibition on the representation of women in art. The decision sparked an outcry: hundreds of visitors protested, arguing that the painting was not misogynistic but tragic. And perhaps that is Waterhouse’s genius: he created images that resist any definitive interpretation. His women are neither angels nor demons. They are simply human—all too human.
07Epilogue: the final spell
In 1917, as the First World War raged, John William Waterhouse died of cancer in his studio in St John’s Wood. He was sixty-seven, and left behind hundreds of paintings, some unfinished. Among them, a sketch of The Lady of Shalott, as if he had wanted, until the very end, to capture the eternal return of this doomed heroine.
Today, his works continue to enchant us. Perhaps because they do not merely recount ancient myths, but also our own fears and desires. Perhaps because, like Circe, like the Lady of Shalott, like the sirens, they know that beauty and danger are inseparable.
So the next time you encounter one of these enchantresses in a museum, take a moment to look at her. She is already watching you. And who knows? Perhaps she, too, holds a golden cup.