THE LADY OF SHALOTT

• today I'm going to tell you all about The Lady of Shallot which is a painting the one that you can see in the background here but it's not just this painting actually I'm going to talk about three of these paintings all painted by John William Waterhouse they were made at different times in his career and the nice thing is that he painted the subject a few times but it illustrates three different parts of the story he started out with this one which he painted in 1888 and which is arguably the most famous one it's in the Tate Gallery in London then six years later he made this one that's in 1894. it's now in the Leeds Gallery of Art in well Leeds and eventually in 1915 he painted this version that is now in the Art Gallery of Ontario so by using these three paintings we can go through the story of the lady of shalot but first a little bit of background on John William Waterhouse often when you hear or read about John William Waterhouse it is said that he was a pre-raphaelite painter and that I'm afraid is not true he was not part of the pre-raphaelite Brotherhood he was of a younger generation I mean he was four years old when the pre-raphaelite Brotherhood disbanded and I know that this was a Brotherhood of very young men but they didn't include toddlers no John William Waterhouse was not part of that Brotherhood but he was very much inspired by them as I supposed almost every painter of his generation in Britain was they either embraced the ideals of the prb or clearly rejected them it would be more correct to call Waterhouse a Victorian painter the difference being that in techniques and often composition he worked in the academic style but in subject matter followed the pre-raphaelite Brotherhood because they and he loved stories from mythology and medieval lore especially when they were about beautiful women one of those subjects that he loved and was generally loved at the time were the Arthurian Legends now these legends about King Arthur are historically complex that is we don't really know if there ever was a real King Arthur there may or may not have been an historical base of a king in the 5th or 6th Century the first stories that we know of him were made up and they were made up many centuries after he supposedly lived that is mainly in the late 11th and 12th century they were popular at the court of William the Conqueror and they would become a theme that stories were written upon for centuries to come although I have to say that they became more and more rare over time until there was this 19th century Revival because in Britain in the 19th century people started to idealize the Middle Ages especially those in Britain many books plays poems were written with a medieval setting and often in the Arthurian Legends I guess today you would call them elaborate fan fictions that were written at the time in this case these paintings were based on a popular poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson called the lady of shalot he Alfred Lord Tennyson that is in turn probably was inspired by the 15th century book lamorteur by Sir Thomas Mallory although in his telling the woman was called Elaine of astrolat now Sir Thomas Malory in turn was probably inspired by the 13th century short story called dona discalotta in each of these medieval Stories the lady in question meets Lancelot one of the Knights of the Round Table she falls in love with him and she professes her love but he rejects her and then she dies with a broken heart but not immediately so she has some time to prepare so she writes out what she wants her burial to be like and she wants to be placed in a boat on embroidered cloth beset with jewels and a purse on her with a letter explaining what has happened to her then the boat should be set to drift and in most versions of the medieval Stories the boat ends up in Camelot where King Arthur is made aware of it and the letter is found and read to him in the version by Sir Thomas Mallory Lancelot then offers to pay for her burial but in every case of the telling of the story in the 13th the 14th and the 15th century they meet she falls in love and dies of Love sickness and her body is placed in a boat and set a drift now we'll skip a few sentries and come up to the 19th century where Alfred Lord Tennyson has taken the story and given it his own twist I suppose that he knew the older stories because they were republished in the 19th century and he wrote that poem and they were clearly based on them his first version he published along with a collection of poetry In 1832 although the title page of the book said 1833. but that one was not received very well in fact it was ridiculed in its reviews and this impacted Tennyson so much that he didn't publish any new poetry for a decade so then in 1842 he tried again and in his new collection of poetry he published a revised version of The Lady of Shallot this time it was received quite well in fact several of the poems in it would become Classics of English poetry some of them would become the subject of series of paintings and other artworks for instance the poem Godiva about Lady Godiva would be the source for paintings like this one on which I did a video a while ago and the lady of Charlotte was one of those poems that became very popular and I guess I can see why there's this popular Trope in especially Victorian England about doomed people people who fall in love and die of a broken heart or are doomed by unrequited love there are instances where men are the subject of this but usually it's women and the lady of Charlotte fits right in there think for instance of this painting by John Everett Miller of Ophelia there are many obvious parallels between the two stories and even these two paintings of two women dying on water and both more or less of a broken heart and the lady of Charlotte was the inspiration for many artists associated with a pre-raphaelite Brotherhood people who were actually part of that Brotherhood but also the slightly Wider Circle like for instance this one William Holman hunt one of the founders of supreme referralite Brotherhood or this one by Elizabeth sudal she in case you're not familiar was one of the favorite models of the pre-raphaelite Brotherhood she was the model for the Ophelia that I showed you before and she was also married to Dante Gabrielle Rossetti but also aspired to be an artist in her own right now we're going to have a look at these paintings but not in the order that John William Waterhouse made them because the three different parts of the story that he Illustrated in the paintings he did in the wrong order that is the Reversed order of the story so the one he made in 1915 is this one and it shows us the first part of the story in the poem the last one we'll see is the first one he made and the last part of the story but let's start here this painting he made as I said in 1915. now the poem tells us the story of the lady of shalot but it's different from the medieval stories because in those she is a daughter of a nobleman and she simply meets Lancelot in the course of her life but in this case there's more of a fantasy element to it we are told that there's an island in the river which is Upstream of the city of Camelot on this island there's a castle with towers and in one of those towers sits the lady of Charlotte it can't be far from Camelot because it's described that From The Towers you can actually see the city but in this Tower this lady of Charlotte is sitting and she is cursed we are not told exactly how or why or by whom just that Whispers have told her that she is and her curse is that she cannot look out of her window and she cannot leave her room she is to sit in her room and view the world only through a mirror she has to weave tapestries with images that she sees through her mirror and her tapestries are referred to as her magic web so in the poem she sits there day in day out weaving whatever she sees through her mirror without any care for the more mundane practicalities of these things of where she's going to get food sleep or some fresh clothing but understandably she's getting fed up with all of this now I've put the entire poem in the description below in case you want to read it that is the 1842 version but at some point the verse reads and I quote but in her web she still Delights to weave The Mirror's magic sights for often through the silent nights a funeral with plumes and lights and music went to Camelot or when the moon was overhead came two young lovers lately wed I am half sick of Shadows said the lady of shalot end quote this is the instance we see in this painting here she is indeed fed up with the Shadows that is seeing the world through a mirror and we can see that in her bearing she stretched her arms over her head like if she's stretching her back as if tired of doing the same thing all day and in the round mirror at the back of the painting we can see many towered Camelot but also there are these two people that are mentioned in the poem the two young lovers lately wed there are some intriguing little details here by the way we can see her large Loom that she's sitting behind and we can also see the work that she's been doing there's these three little scenes that she's been weaving there are scenes that have been described earlier in the poem that happened around her Island the comings and goings of people going to and from Camelot the one in the middle seems to be of some knights riding side by side and in this one we can see someone on his knees in front of someone else maybe it's the proposal of the newlyweds that are now walking outside we can also see the little balls of wool in various colors around or on the floor and the shuttles of her Loom with various colors hanging off the loom and one is in her lap note by the way that they look like little boat which of course foreshadows her ending but there's one strange little detail as well in the mirror we can see the handle of the Loom and right next to it there's a poppy but if we look to the front of the painting The foreground we see that same handle without the poppy now I'm not entirely sure why that is but one of the explanations that I read about it says that it emphasizes her dreamy State the sort of limbo she is in and it Compares it to that of the effect of the poppy that is of opium then when we move to the second painting the one made in 1894 we see her in a different attitude she stood up and she seems to look outside of her painting what has happened is part three of the poem in it it is described how Lancelot rides down to Camelot and he is described in detail in being extremely handsome and looking impressive in his armor and his plumes and his black girls that flow from underneath his helmet this impresses her so much that she can't control herself anymore and she gets up goes to the window and looks out directly at him and at that moment her magic mirror cracks we can see her tangled up in her own lines and if she walks she's going to fall which of course is exactly what's going to happen to her behind her we see the cracked mirror and in Its Reflection we can even see the helmet of Lancelot but she already looks disheveled and her Loom seems to explode she goes outside according to the poem down she came and found a boat beneath a willow left afloat and round about the prowl she wrote The Lady of Shallot so she writes her name on the bow of the boat and it's mentioned that it's the end of the day she gets in with her tapestry she loosens the chain with which the boat was tied up and she floats with the flow of the river now in the painting we can see all this happening directly her Tower can be seen off to the left and there we see the stairs she's come down onto the water and she's still holding the chain that she's just undone and we can see her sitting on her tapestry and she's about to lay down because according to the poem She lays down and floats away towards Camelot but she died before she reaches the first house along the shore near the bow we see three candles two of them have been blown out this of course refers to her impending doom that her last candle is about to be snuffed out as well and of course a crucifix you can see it lying there and there on the bow we can also see her name well frankly we can barely see it but it seems to be carved into the front of the boat in the poem she wrote it there herself it doesn't seem as if she had time to actually carve something into the wood but never mind and now she's floating Downstream towards Camelot where of course for ears she reached upon the tide the first house by the Waterside singing in her song she died The Lady of Shallot which is of course a lovely and dramatic ending to a lovely and dramatic poem actually it goes on for a few more verses her boat arrives in Camelot and she's dead and found and just as in the old stories she's shown to Lancelot so in this case there's the last lines of the poem which are but Lancelot mused a little space he said she has a lovely face God in his Mercy lend her grace the lady of shalot so if there is a moral to this story I would say it is don't get cursed in your towers and don't fall madly in love with knights anyway if you want to see these paintings you can go to the tape Gallery in London that's not the tape modern by the way or if you want to see the other one to leads to the Leeds Art Gallery but if you want to go to Ontario for the last one I have to disappoint you according to their website it's not currently on display now before you run off remember to like And subscribe and there's also a thanks button below this video with which you can support this channel financially as I'm sure you're aware a lot of work goes into making these videos and I'd love to be able to continue doing that so if you enjoy them all your help is greatly appreciated anyways thanks again for watching and I hope to see you again soon bye