John William Waterhouse

Born: April 6, 1849, in Rome, Italy (though his parents were British) Died: February 10, 1917 Though considered a PRE-RAPHAELITE, WATERHOUSE was not a member of the brotherhood. The subjects of many of his paintings were female characters from works of poetry, such as Homer and Tennyson. During his lifetime, he was considered one of the greatest painters of all time, but his popularity waned in the latter part of the 20th century.

Below: "ARIADNE"

"Almost everything we call "higher culture" is based on the spiritualization of cruelty, on its becoming more profound: this is my proposition. That "savage animal" has not really been "mortified"; it lives and flourishes, it has merely become - divine. What constitutes the painful voluptuousness of tragedy is cruelty; what seems agreeable in so-called tragic pity, and at bottom in everything sublime, up to the highest and most delicate shudders of metaphysics, receives its sweetness solely from the admixture of cruelty. What the Roman in the arena, the Christian in the ecstasies of the cross, the Spaniard at an auto-da-fe or bulllfight, the Japanese of today when he flocks to tragedies, the laborer in a Parisian suburb who feels a nostalgia for bloody revolutions, the Wagnerienne who "submits to" Tristan and Isolde, her will suspended - what all of them enjoy and seek to drink in with mysterious ardor are the spicy potions of the great Circe, "cruelty." FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

"Painting is the most beautiful of all arts. In it, all sensations are condensed; contemplating it, everyone can create a story at the will of his imagination and - with a single glance - have his soul invaded by the most profound recollections; no effort of memory, everything is summed up in one instant." PAUL GAUGUIN

"CIRCE OFFERING THE CUP TO ULYSSES"

Above: "HYLAS AND THE NYMPHS"

"Painting gives the object itself; poetry what it implies. Painting embodies what a thing contains in itself; poetry suggests what exists out of it, in any manner connected with it." WILLIAM HAZLITT

"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen." PABLO PICASSO

Above: "THE LADY OF SHALLOT"

"My aim in painting has always been the most exact transcription possible of my most intimate impression of nature." EDWARD HOPPER

"It doesn't matter that your painting is small. Kopecks are also small, but when a lot are put together they make a ruble. Each painting displayed in a gallery and each good book that makes it into a library, no matter how small they may be, serves a great cause: accretion of the national wealth." ANTON CHEKHOV

POSTSCRIPT "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture and, if possible, speak a few reasonable words." JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

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