Gather Ye Rosebuds While Ye May is the first of two paintings Waterhouse made on Robert Herrick's seventeenth-century poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, whose opening lines urge young women to seize the day because the rose that smiles today will be dying tomorrow. This version dates from 1908 and measures about 62 by 46 cm.
A girl holding out the roses
A young woman looks past the viewer with her chin lifted, holding a silver bowl of pink roses out in both hands. Behind her stands a window filled with heraldic stained glass. Museum descriptions point out that her gaze and the window are reflected in a mirror, and that two purple flowers in the reflection tell the poem's story in miniature: one stands straight and one has begun to wilt. The roses she offers are at their peak, and Waterhouse is quietly reminding us how short that peak is.
The twin that went missing
In 1909 Waterhouse painted a second Rosebuds picture, a larger canvas showing two young women picking flowers outdoors. That painting disappeared for nearly a century. It was found in an old Canadian farmhouse, and when the owners took it to an art dealer in 2002 he reportedly nearly fell off his chair. Sotheby's valued it at 1.75 to 2.5 million dollars ahead of an April 2007 sale, though it did not find a buyer at the auction.
Little-known facts
- Herrick's poem was published in 1648, long before Waterhouse; he was one of many Victorian painters drawn to its warning about fleeting youth.
- The 1908 painting is far smaller and more intimate than the 1909 version, which makes the bowl of roses feel as though it is being offered directly to you.
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