The Lady of Shalott by Waterhouse: Curse, Mirror, and the River (1888)
A young woman in a long white dress sits in a dark wooden boat at the edge of a river, among reeds and autumn trees. Her red-gold hair falls over her shoulders, her lips are parted as if she is singing, and with one hand she is letting go of the chain that ties the boat to the bank. Beside her, three candles stand at the prow; two have already gone out. This is John William Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott, painted in 1888 and now one of the most popular pictures in Tate Britain. The picture below is our vintage poster version of the painting; the original is shown further down.
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Artist: John William Waterhouse (1849–1917)
Date: 1888
Medium: Oil on canvas, 183 × 230 cm
Collection: Tate Britain, London (presented by Sir Henry Tate, 1894)
Source: Alfred Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott" (1832, revised 1842)
What is the story?
The painting illustrates Alfred Tennyson's poem "The Lady of Shalott", first published in 1832 and revised ten years later. On the island of Shalott, in a river that flows down to King Arthur's Camelot, a young woman lives alone in a grey tower. She is under a mysterious curse: she must never look directly out at the world. Instead she watches it in a mirror and weaves what she sees into a magic tapestry.
One day the mirror shows her Sir Lancelot riding past, his armour flashing in the sun. She leaves her loom and looks out of the window at him. The mirror cracks, the web flies out, and she knows the curse has come upon her. She finds a boat, writes her name around the prow, lies down in it and lets the current carry her towards Camelot, singing until she dies. When the boat arrives, the knights and ladies of the court gather to look at her, and Lancelot remarks only that she has a lovely face.
What does the painting show?
Waterhouse illustrates the fourth and final part of the poem, the moment the Lady sets off. She sits upright in the boat, still alive, her body turned towards us but her eyes fixed on something far away. Her mouth is open in the song Tennyson describes. With her left hand she releases the chain, and the boat is about to drift into the open water.
Under her lies the tapestry she wove in the tower, now trailing over the side of the boat into the river. Its medallions show scenes of the world she was only allowed to see in the mirror. At the prow stand a lantern, a crucifix and three tall candles. Two are already out, and the last flickering flame measures how long she has left. On the left, among the reeds, a swallow flies low over the water, and the riverbank behind her is painted with the careful observation of an artist working from nature.
The colour does much of the work. Her white dress and pale face shine against the dark trees and the black hull of the boat, and the reds and golds of the tapestry make her the only warm, living spot in a cold, darkening landscape.
Waterhouse and the Pre-Raphaelites
Waterhouse was born in Rome in 1849, a generation after the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but he took up many of their favourite themes: Arthurian legend, tragic heroines and the poetry of Tennyson. His style combines their bright colour and close detail with the looser brushwork and outdoor light of French painting in the 1880s. A doomed young woman carried by a river also recalls Millais's Ophelia, painted thirty-five years earlier.
He returned to the Lady twice. In 1894 he painted her at the moment she turns to look at Lancelot, now in Leeds Art Gallery, and in 1915 he showed her weary at her loom, "half sick of shadows", now in the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. The mirror, so central to the story, also appears in his Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses. You can follow these women in our essay on Waterhouse's women who break the rule and browse every Waterhouse painting we have explained.
Where can you see it?
The painting was presented to the nation by the sugar refiner Sir Henry Tate in 1894, as part of the gift that founded the Tate Gallery, and it remains one of the best-loved works at Tate Britain on Millbank in London. Entry to the permanent collection is free. Further along the river, in Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery is the home of Turner's The Fighting Temeraire.
Hang John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott as a vintage art poster from the Sapiens Verbum print shop.
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Sources
Alfred Tennyson, "The Lady of Shalott" (1842 version); Wikipedia, "The Lady of Shalott (painting)".
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