John William Waterhouse "The Lady of Shalott" (1888)
Discover the literature inspirations in the Pre-Raphaelite art.
➡️"Literature in the Pre-Raphaelite Paintings"
[🔗link in bio]
✍️Anastasia Manioudaki
💬 Tennyson’s Arthurian poem of the cursed Lady of Shalott fascinated the Victorians. The poem tells of an isolated lady with a mysterious curse. She must never look out the window. Instead, she sees the outside world through a mirror and weaves those scenes on her loom. However, one day she looks out the window instead of the mirror when she sees Sir Lancelot riding by. Consequently, that activates the curse and throws her into an emotional state.
Waterhouse painted a later stage of the poem. The lady knows she is going to die from the curse, due to her sexual desire for Lancelot. As a result, she leaves the tower and takes a boat down to Camelot. Unfortunately, by the time she arrives, she is already dead.
Waterhouse keeps the aesthetics of the Pre-Raphaelite’s but moves on technically to experiment with impressionism as seen in the handling of nature.
🖼️ John William Waterhouse, The Lady of Shalott, 1888, Tate Britain, London, UK. @tate
#preraphaelite#johnwilliamwaterhouse#ladyofshalott#19thcenturypainting#victorian#arthistory#paintingoftheday#art
To celebrate the release of DANCE FEVER by @florenceandthemachine , @spotifyuk had our designs reproduced as Pre-Raphaelite inspired tapestries; possibly the world’s first textile billboards.
@autumndewilde’s decadent portraits of @florence seem destined to be woven and displayed like classical art, so it feels perfect that these pieces are currently on display in the garden of London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery, coinciding with the exhibition “Reframed: The Woman in the Window”, featuring works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Louise Bourgeois, et al.
“Pre-Raphaelite art has been a musical and artistic inspiration of mine for years, brought to life most recently through the lyrics and album creative in Dance Fever. To be transported back to my favourite era and re-imagined in the style of the leading women who inspired Rossetti and Hunt is a dream I never imagined, on top of being hung in one of my most loved galleries in my hometown of South London.” —Florence Welch 🌷
Thank you to Eliza Williams of @creativereview for the fabulous feature, and to @tot__tex and @spotify . It was a delightful and unexpected trip to see our designs treated in this beautiful way.
#florence#dancefever#autumndewilde#dulwichpicturegallery#dulwichvillage#florenceandthemachine#florencewelch#vinyldreams#tottex#tapestries#preraphaelite#spotify#lacemonsters#fatm#thunderwingstudio