The Art of Reception: J. W. Waterhouse and the Painting of Desire in Victorian Britain

This chapter examines how paintings depicting the classical past became a way of talking about—or not talking about—sexual desire by focusing on the art of John William Waterhouse. It considers four of Waterhouse's paintings—Saint Eulalia, Mariamne, Hylas and the Nymph, and Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus—and shows that they are a paradigmatic site for reflecting on the complexity of the circulation of classical knowledge in Victorian culture—reception in action. It also explores how Waterhouse represents the male subject of desire, and how his representational devices position, manipulate, and implicate the viewer. The discussion places Waterhouse at the center of a Victorian worry about male self-control and erotic openness, and suggests that his case is an example of how one strategy of modern self-definition loves to oversimplify “the Victorians” as a contrastive other to today—and nowhere more obviously than in the field of sexuality.