OrpheusEurydice1.0251a

George Frederic Watts, 1817-1904, "Orpheus and Eurydice," oil on canvas, 1869

Watts engaged this topic several times. His earliest paintings are in landscape format, and portrait format versions are later. The 1869 (shown at right) has Orpheus grasping the falling Eurydice by her left breast with his right hand and by her right shoulder with his left hand. In later versions, his right hand reaches for her waist. The 1872 version shows him grasping her breast with only his right hand, while his left hand still cradles his lyre.

Kestner interprets the gesture of the 1869 Orpheus as evidence of "one of Watts' most sensual canvases" and as evidence of Watts' repressed sexuality. Kestner reads the 1869 painting as a "parallel" to the historical shortlived marriage of the painter to Ellen Terry. (Kestner, Mythology and Misogyny (Madison, 1989), 75.