Waterhouse exhibited Thisbe at the Royal Academy in 1909. It is an oil on canvas about 98.5 by 60 cm, now in a private collection, and its source is Book IV of Ovid's Metamorphoses (lines 55 to 166), the tale of two Babylonian lovers whose families forbid them to meet.
The beginning of the story
Most painters of Pyramus and Thisbe choose the tragic end, with the bloodied veil and the dying lovers. Waterhouse chooses the quiet beginning. Thisbe stands in a room with her ear pressed to a crack in the party wall that divides her house from Pyramus's, listening to him whisper to her from the other side. In Ovid, the crack had been there since the wall was built and nobody had noticed it until the lovers did.
Details worth finding
Thisbe wears a flowing red dress patterned with gold flowers, one shoulder bare, her dark hair tied loosely back. Behind her is a loom hung with threads, a spindle and a ball of yarn on a stool at her feet, a blue glass vase on the sill, and tiles patterned in turquoise along the wall. The spinning gear alludes to another Ovid story from the same book, the daughters of Minyas, who tell Thisbe's tale while they weave. The only hint of the ending is a red and white shawl crumpled in a far corner of the room, a quiet reference to the veil that will be found bloody.
Little-known facts
- Shakespeare later played the same story for laughs in A Midsummer Night's Dream, where the lovers meet through a wall played by a man in a costume.
- Waterhouse often chose the moment before disaster, such as Ophelia gathering flowers or the Lady of Shalott setting out in her boat.
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