Pretty Boys on Display: New Sculpture, Visual Culture, and the Role of the Female Gaze in John William Waterhouse’s Paintings

Abstract

This thesis examines how three works by British painter John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), Hylas and the Nymphs (1896) (Manchester City Art Gallery), The Awakening of Adonis (1900) (private collection) and Echo and Narcissus (1903) (Walker Art Gallery) can be read as reactions to the increasing role of the male body as spectacle in nineteenth-century visual culture. The thesis is particularly concerned with the idea of the female gaze and how the women in these paintings view the male as objects. Waterhouse, who painted mainly under the auspices of the conservative Royal Academy of Art in London from 1871 until his death in 1917, is best known for paintings of mystical women. However, after 1890, he turned to Ovid’s Metamorphosis and other Greek/Roman writings as inspiration. The three paintings listed above reflect this change, depicting Greek myths about adolescent boys whose beauty decides their destinies. They also reflect a change in style, as the figures lose their heavy dresses and togas and gain loose fitting draperies that both hide and accent the body. The male figure becomes prominent in these works, and the female takes on the role of voyeur. This thesis studies how these changes coincide with the art movement New Sculpture and the men’s fitness trend Physical Culture, which trained men to emulate Greek sculpture. These two trends, like the Waterhouse works under discussion, focus on iconic male beauty as a symbol of excellence.

Additionally, this thesis focuses on popular entertainments such as Toga-Plays, Living Pictures, and Physical Culture, or body building demonstrations, which display the male as entertainment for a growing female market. Coincidently, the rise of the matinée idol occurs during this era and demonstrates Victorian and Edwardian society’s fascination with the male body on display, a fascination possibly portrayed by Waterhouse in these paintings. As current scholarship on Waterhouse demonstrates, Waterhouse was aware of, and painted, social and political movements or ideas in subtle ways. This thesis continues this discussion by promoting the theory that these later paintings can be posited as a reaction to the rise of the female as voyeur and the emergence of the male body as a source of entertainment.