Artist: John William Waterhouse (English, 1849â1917)
Collection: Private Collection
In 1916 Waterhouse submitted three works to the Royal Academy: the group composition A Tale from the Decameron along with two single figure works "I am Half Sick of Shadows," said the Lady of Shalott and Miranda-The Tempest. As the titles suggest, Waterhouse had abandoned classical myths as subjects in favor of medieval and Renaissance narratives, often centering on a woman experiencing a revelation.
The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's most romantic plays, written late in his career, circa 1611; its original performance a year later coincided with the wedding of Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of England's James I to Frederick, the Elector Palatine, later King of Bohemia.
As with many of Waterhouse's single-figure pictures of women, Miranda is a legendary, mystical woman withdrawn from the world, her future in peril. Miranda, her expression hidden from the viewer in three quarter profile, becomes a decorative object of dangerous beauty, her body surrounded by the violent bruised blue waves, the broken bits of Ferdinand's ship's mast suggesting the destructive, transformative power of love.
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