Circe Invidiosa

John William Waterhouse is arguably one of the most prominent British artists of the late Victorian era. The Art Gallery of South Australia has the honour of being the first collecting institution in the world to recognise Waterhouse’s artistic genius, and the purchase of his work, The favourites of the Emperor Honorius, in 1883 was the first by the artist to enter a public institution.

Although Waterhouse adhered to many of the central tenets of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, his work is more closely aligned with that of the Olympians – an informal cohort of artists drawing inspiration from ancient Greek and Roman mythologies to illustrate complex moral tales. Waterhouse’s painting of Circe, the scorned witch, poisoning the sea is arresting. The elongated proportions of the canvas and the almost sickly aquamarine of the ocean evoke an uncanny otherworldliness – the viewer knows unequivocally that the world depicted in Waterhouse’s painting is not the world that we inhabit.

Now one of the most beloved and reproduced works in the Gallery’s collection, Circe Invidiosa was given a mixed reception when acquired for Adelaide in 1892, with the Daily Telegraph of 1893 suggesting the painting ‘repels rather than attracts the average sightseer’.

Tansy Curtin, Curator, International Art pre-1980