"I Am Half-Sick of Shadows," Said the Lady of Shalott

John William Waterhouse

Oil on canvas

Art Gallery of Ontario

This luminous oil painting depicts the Lady of Shalott, the cursed protagonist of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1832 poem, seated in her isolated tower and resting from her weaving. Clad in a rich red dress, she gazes toward a large mirror behind her that reflects the world outside — including Romanesque arches, a distant Camelot, and two young lovers — which she is forbidden by a curse from viewing directly. The geometric tiled floor, the frame of the loom, and the loom's shuttle-shaped bobbins (which foreshadow the boat in which she will later meet her death) draw the viewer's eye deep into an interior suffused with warm reds, yellows, and blues that echo the more vivid world beyond her window. Waterhouse, an English painter who transitioned from Academic classicism to the Pre-Raphaelite style, returned to this subject three times across his career, and this 1915 canvas — his final treatment — captures an earlier, more introspective moment in the narrative than his celebrated 1888 version, emphasizing psychological depth and restrained melancholy.