In December 2008 the Groninger Museum will present the largest retrospective of the work of John William Waterhouse (1849-1917) that has ever been organized. Many splendid works come from Australia, Taiwan and Canada, and have not previously been on show in Europe.

The artist was born in Rome to British parents but the family soon moved to London. When still young, he assisted in the studio of his parents, both of whom were artists. Here, Waterhouse developed his interest in painting, sculpture and Antiquity. In 1870, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Arts. He made his name during the 1870s and 1880s with startlingly original, often melancholy, pictures drawn from Greek and Roman antiquity.

By the 1890s, Waterhouse was renowned throughout the British Empire, and at the World's Fairs, for his richly coloured, charged scenes of beautiful young women. Drawn from Ovid, Keats, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Shelley, and Dante, Waterhouse's scenes celebrate the passionate interconnections of women, water, nature, love, and death, often with occultist subtexts that suggest his fascination with the underworld.

Today Waterhouse is often called a 'late Pre-Raphaelite', but this ignores the fact that he was also a modern artist fully aware of the exciting artistic innovations taking place in Paris in the second half of the nineteenth century. He felt at ease with the enchanted world of myths and sagas, but was also inspired by the looser tone of French Impressionism, poetry and music.

Waterhouse's passion for beauty lives on in the marvellous paintings that he left behind, many of which will be on show in the Groninger Museum.

Picture: J.W. Waterhouse, The lady of Shalott, 1888, Oil on canvas, 153 x 200 cm, Tate Britain.