A Naiad
Date: 1893
Also known as ‘Hylas with a Nymph’.
Exhibited at the New Gallery’s summer exhibition in 1893: “J.W. Waterhouse sent a “Naiad”, the complement of his “Hamadryad” at the Royal Academy. The Naiad has left her blue stream to peer, between the trunks of the trees upon its bank, at a faun sleeping in the shadow of the wood.
The Naiad has just risen, nude, from the stream, and peers between the willow stems at a sleeping youth, who lies half covered with a leopard skin on the bank. Two green water-lily leaves confine the water-nymph’s red tresses. Harmony of pink and green, relieved by blue light on the water. Large oblong picture.”
(From catalogue notes written by Henry Blackburn when the painting was exhibited at the New Gallery in 1893).