Waterhouse is famous for imagined heroines, which makes Miss Betty Pollock stand out: it is a named portrait of a real girl. He painted Elizabeth Pollock, known as Betty, in 1911 when she was fourteen, and the picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year.
A portrait that feels like a story
Betty sits at the base of a tree in a pale, loose dress with a blue sash tied at her waist, her hands clasped in her lap, and looks back toward the viewer over her shoulder. Behind her a pond is thick with lily pads and the bank is scattered with small wildflowers. The soft, feathery brushwork and the green light make it feel less like a formal sitting and more like a moment caught on a summer afternoon.
Why it is different
Waterhouse built his reputation on women from myth, poetry and legend: Circe, Ophelia, the Lady of Shalott. Here the setting is a garden and the sitter is simply herself. Even so, you can see his habits at work in the long, composed posture, the careful link between the color of the sash and the sky, and the way the landscape surrounds her like a stage set.
Little-known facts
- The portrait was painted only six years before Waterhouse's death in 1917, in the same decade as his late mythological works such as Miranda and Fair Rosamund.
- Waterhouse exhibited at the Royal Academy nearly every year of his working life, and this portrait went on show there in 1912.
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