Flora

Description

Here we find a young female model posing with her arms in the air. She stares off into the distance from a side profile and her long hair hangs down to cover the full length of the drawing. Her outfit is delicate and feminine, typical of how Waterhouse liked to picture his female figures.

He always chose pale skinned, very slim models from a certain age group for his work and would re-use his favourite ones many times. Some would criticise him for not challenging himself with other shapes and sizes but he liked to stick to this consistent look which also best captured the image of innocence and purity. You may well spot the same model in other works by this artist, or even members of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, who would often exchange models.

Waterhouse would always focus on femininity within his portraits, offering a natural beauty which proved popular with the public at that time. The academic approach was starting to lose favour by this time, but he was still able to be accepted at the Royal Academy and turn his work into a successful career.

Waterhouse's Models

It led to the term of Waterhouse-esque models which referred specifically to this very particular look, but it also persisted throughout the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and so Waterhouse was not alone in that regard. This group of British artists would take inspiration from poetry and literature in order to provide an alternative to the more contemporary styles of the late 19th century and built up a strong following.

Waterhouse was himself, of course, classically trained and most technical studies would always start with drawing as a base from which anything else can then come afterwards. One can immediately tell from these Waterhouse drawings about how he had gone through rigorous academic training from an early age in order to produce such lifelike depictions using only a few pieces of chalk.

Portraiture was very much his main interest, and within the drawing medium he would tend to focus on single figures rather than over complicating his compositions. For large scale oil paintings he would therefore produce multiple studies to cover each figure, and then commence the main work once he was content and confident in how the final piece would look.

Medium

Flora, as shown here, was completed on buff paper and the artist himself would regularly make use of sketchbooks to keep his drawings organised and protected, though most were later separated and sold off privately. These creations could now command considerable value, such is the interest that remains today in Waterhouse's career.

He sketched using charcoal, chalk and pencil, very much in line with his formal artistic education as a young student. Indeed, most British artists during the Victorian age would have followed a similar path, and therefore worked in a similar manner. Drawing was considered a fundamental, key requirement at that stage, and was normally the first discipline introduced to young students.

Study for Flora and the Zephyrs

This drawing was completed as a study for Waterhouse's Flora and the Zephyrs, a painting which would be first displayed at the Royal Academy in 1898. That painting would be purchased by collector George McCulloch who was already well known to the artist, though most of Waterhouse's drawings would simply remain within his own property until his death.

It is believed that the vast majority of his study drawings were portraits, as he understood that this challenging genre would always play a key role in the success of each final painting, essentially deciding its fate. He was also very clear in his mind about the type of mood that his figures should display, and so wanted to plan this element in detail.

We do know that it was actually Sandro Botticelli's Allegory of Spring (Primavera) that inspired the final painting, and comparisons can certainly be drawn between the two artists in terms of how they produced female portraits, even though there were many centuries that passed between their respective careers.

Large Images of Flora and the Zephyrs and the Sketch

See below for a comparison between the individual sketch of Flora and the final painting, with its much more complex composition. One can also understand more about the artist's working processes, and how he went from initial pencil, charcoal or chalk sketches of his model to the fully complete paintings in multiple layers of oil.

Flora (Drawing)

Flora and the Zephyrs