You can't miss her ripe, pubescent pout. Here, in her manifold guises, is the Waterhouse woman. Or, rather, the Waterhouse girl – for it was the promise of womanhood that really intrigued Waterhouse. In all my years of admiring his art and aesthetic, it never occurred to me that there might be something borderline transgressive about his obsession with beautiful young women, but then I suppose I never had the benefit of various Waterhouse experts to instruct my eye.
Among the first expressions of Waterhouse's interest in adolescent females is the Martyrdom of St Eulalia, which depicts (in the words of the audioguide) 'an adolescent, semi-naked girl' who 'lies before us at a dramatically foreshortened angle'. As Peter Trippi, art historian and Waterhouse biographer, explains, St Eulalia was Waterhouse's 'breakthrough picture'. It was not only large and much noticed at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (resulting in Waterhouse being elected as an associate of the Royal Academy - although presumably not for presenting us with 'what might be considered an eroticised body for our viewing pleasure'), but it also 'summarised in many ways his desire to take an obscure subject and make it absolutely unforgettable'.
It is, however, in St Cecelia (pictured above) that, according to Robert Upstone, curator of modern British art at the Tate, we get the 'full fulfilment' of the Waterhouse girl. 'There is a subtle eroticism to the way in which we look at this very beautiful woman who is sleeping. We are allowed to gaze upon her because she cannot see us looking at her, but there is also something unattainable about her. She is other-worldly, she is in a strange dreaming state, but she also hovers in this ambiguous state between childhood and adolescence and full adulthood.'
In terms of popularity, however, both are trumped by the Lady of Shalott – who is neither semi-naked nor somnolent - and the Tate apparently sells more postcards of this than of any other painting in its collection.
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