The Decameron – answers

Good afternoon everybody ¹ and welcome ² to the Lady Lever Art Gallery.
I’m Sandra Penketh, Head of the Lady Lever Art Gallery. I’m going to talk about two pictures by John William Waterhouse today, (erm) ‘The Decameron‘ which is the picture here on the right-hand side and ‘The Enchanted Garden’ here on the left-hand side.
We’re very fortunate ³ really that we’ve got a pair ⁴ of paintings to talk about and also a pair of paintings that are hanging ⁵ in a very suitable ⁶ place within the gallery (euh) because of the style and who the artist was interested in ⁷ which I’ll elucidate a little as we go along.
Now John William Waterhouse was born in Rome in 1849 and he was the son ⁸ of a painter, (and) you know, so from the very beginning he was brought up ⁹ within an artistic environment ¹⁰. His family moved back ¹¹ to England when he was quite young, but he proceeded to help his father in the studio. So you know, he was immersed, and I think when you’re thinking about the character of the artist and what he might be interested in, it’s worth ¹² thinking about ¹³ that.
From the 1870s he trained ¹⁴ at the Royal Academy School. So, you know, he was in the best and most academic training ground you could enter really for an artist. And through ¹⁵ that, and presumably ¹⁶ also through his father’s ¹⁷ associations, he got to meet a number of prestigious artists and certainly was exposed ¹⁸ to work of a number of quite prestigious and well-known artists.
The artists that he (sort of) took up and became most interested in ¹⁹ immediately were what we would call the Victorian Classicists*. So people like Frederick Leighton and Lawrence Alma-Tadema, both ²⁰ of whom are represented by work in this gallery and again that’s why I say these pictures hang in a very suitable place because right ²¹ next to them we can see works by Leighton – you’ve got his wonderful picture here on the bottom left, ‘Psamathe‘ by Frederick Leighton (and) the amazing and incredibly ²² impressive ‘Daphnephoria‘ which is this very large painting here.
And then there are two works by Lawrence Alma-Tadema just to the left over there – erm ‘The Favourite Poet’ and the very famous ‘Tepidarium’. So it’s worth ²³ taking a look ²⁴ at some of those works and thinking about the type of style that was influencing John William Waterhouse as a (as a) young artist.
As he grew a bit older he became very fascinated by the work of the Pre-Raphaelites** and particularly the work of the later ²⁵ Pre-Raphaelites, (err most) principally ²⁶ Edward Burne-Jones and if you just have ²⁷ a look ²⁸ behind you, you can see works by Burne-Jones – erm ‘The Beguiling of Merlin‘, ‘The Annunciation‘ and ‘The Tree of Forgiveness‘ – are the three large works at the bottom ²⁹ (there) of the wall.
So in a way, it’s a matter of looking at all these different styles and pulling them together ³⁰ and imagining Waterhouse being influenced by them, and then pulling them all together to produce work that looks like ‘The Decameron‘ and ‘The Enchanted Garden‘. He (sort of) fuses the classical and the interests of the Pre-Raphaelites.

So in looking at the pictures we can pick up hallmarks from both those styles. You’ve got quite formal compositions, the way the pictures are laid out in both instances ³¹; yet you’ve got this sort of wonderful intense colour ³² and detail that you would normally associate with the Pre-Raphaelite artists. So you know you can just pick out those stylistic attributes in both works.
Now Waterhouse was very interested in depicting tales from medieval / mediaeval ³³ history and literature. Very much like the Pre-Raphaelite artists. I mentioned ³⁴ that one of the titles of the Burne-Jones paintings you can see is ‘The Beguiling of Merlin‘ and we’ve got works by Millais which represent (sort of) medieval scenes and stories. And that also interested Waterhouse and he (sort of, you know,) picked on those subjects but gave them a (sort of) classical leaning in the way he composed the pictures ³⁵.
Here in these two pictures he’s basing (erm) his illustrations on works by the very famous Italian medieval writer Giovanni Boccaccio. And he’s linked two aspects of this famous work ‘The Decameron‘ by Boccaccio. The work was written ³⁶ in around 1350, when Florence had been subject to the plague ³⁷ and Boccaccio makes up ³⁸ a story where ten young people flee the city to escape the plague. Seven young women ³⁹ and three young men and they go out into the countryside and whilst there they entertain ⁴⁰ each other with various tasks and songs and storytelling to pass the time. To make the time go more quickly.

Notes

Lexis
Both misspelt and misspelled are correct
Both medieval and mediaeval are correct
To fuse – to join, mix, blend
A hallmark – noun – a distinctive feature, especially of excellence