John Waterhouse / Conspicuous Glamour

Women, women, women. Did John Waterhouse paint anything besides them?

I recently caught the Waterhouse exhibit at Musée de Beaux Arts in Montréal. From one fantastical oil painting to the next, I saw Waterhouse’s idealized woman, the same woman; beautiful, forlorn, and melancholy, suspended solitude in every single frame.

Among the brilliant jewel-like colors, a certain conspicuous glamor arises – the centrality of the subject and the light cast upon their porcelain faces parallels pages of fashion editorials in some of today’s more ‘classic’ mode magazines such as Vogue. (Below: Photography by Tim Walker in Italian Vogue and Jacques Dequeker in Vogue Brazil).