Narcissus in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and J. W. Waterhouse’s painting

• Autor(a) principal: Severino, Carlos Mesquita
• Data de Publicação: 2021
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.34624/fb.v0i17.27106

From the time he starts exhibiting in the Royal Academy of Arts, in 1874, until his death, in 1917, J. W. Waterhouse maintained a constant relationship with the classical texts, namely Ovid’s Metamorphoses, based on which he produced seven admirable canvases and various studies. One of these works – Echo and Narcissus (1903; Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool; oil on canvas, 109 cm x 189 cm) – is so well known that it is the most reproduced image of the gallery of Liverpool. In fact, the gallery was a pioneer in the acquisition of the copyright, when acquired the canvas from the artist at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition in 1903. In addition to this work, the painter also used the flower as a recurrent motif in his paintings, naming one of his canvas Narcissus, in 1912, whose composition depicts a flowery English meadow. We propose to analyze Echo and Narcissus, relating it with Ovid’s text and, afterword, studying other paintings that evokes the flower and the figure of the myth.