Waterhouse's Miranda: Two Paintings, Two Storms

Miranda by John William Waterhouse

Waterhouse painted Miranda from Shakespeare's The Tempest at both ends of his career. The first version dates from 1875 and was his first known picture of a Shakespearean heroine and only his second exhibit at the Royal Academy. The later pair of paintings dates from 1916, near the end of his life, and they are nearly identical to each other.

1875: the calm before the storm

In the early painting Miranda sits alone on a rocky shoreline in a pale gown, her bare feet near the water, looking out over a calm sea toward a distant ship. In the play, that ship is about to be caught by the tempest conjured by her father, Prospero. The painting stops just before the magic starts, so the viewer knows what she cannot yet know.

1916: the wreck

Forty years later Waterhouse chose the opposite moment. Miranda stands on the rocks in a blue dress with her hair whipped by the wind, watching a ship break up in the surf at the upper left. We cannot see her face, yet her sorrow is clear: she presses a hand to her heart, grieving for people she believes are drowning. The 1916 compositions are tighter and darker, and they show a painter who had spent his life on the sea's edge of myth and was coming back to a favorite subject.

Little-known facts

  • Waterhouse made two almost identical versions of the 1916 composition, so two separate canvases show the same storm.
  • In The Tempest, Miranda has grown up on the island and has seen almost no one but her father and Caliban, which is why a ship full of strangers means so much to her.

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