Danaids1.0073_Waterhouse

Danaids1.0073_Waterhouse

Victorian Web
OGCMA s.v. "Danaids"

John William Waterhouse, 1849-1917, "The Danaids" (1904), oil on canvas, 162.5 x 127.5 cm, Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums, acc. no. ABDAG003402, purchased with income from the Macdonald Bequest, 1927.

Waterhouse depicts the daughters of Danaus enduring their eternally futile task of pouring water into a bottomless vessel. Kestner, p. 300. treats cultural decisions manifest in Waterhouse's partial disrobing of the one Danaid.
——Kestner, Joseph A. 1989. Mythology and Misogyny: the social discourse of nineteenth-century British classical-subject painting. University of Wisconsin Press.

The upper image at the right is the 1906 version, owned by the Aberdeen Gallery.

The lower image below it is the 1904 version.

Women in flowing robes pour water from golden pitchers into a large bronze basin with a gargoyle spout

Five women in classical attire pour water from golden jugs into a large basin with water spouting from a decorative head

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.