Adonis from Fulham

In 2009, London's Royal Academy put on an exhibition called J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite. I went not once, not twice, but thrice. I was working on a book about the most beautiful boy in the Roman Empire in the year AD 96.

The Siren c. 1900

The paintings were glorious. Waterhouse was inspired by classical writers to paint passionate, luscious scenes from Greek Mythology. Full of jewel-like colours and beautiful models, my favourites were the ones based on passages from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Each of these paintings tells a rich, dense, symbolic tale full of love, pain and transformation.

I was so inspired that I went home an wrote an ode about Orpheus called Thracian O.

That almost never happens. I rarely write Odes.

But that is what great art does. It inspires you.

Ovid inspired Waterhouse and Waterhouse inspired me.

When I was studying Classics at Cambridge, I had the poster of Hylas and the Nymphs on my bedroom wall. I loved the fact that Waterhouse seems to have used the same girl model for all the water nymphs. He only deepened or lightened the chestnut tint of the hair. It makes them look like divine clones.

did the same girl pose for all the water nymphs in Hylas and the Nymphs?

But as I was walking around the  Royal Academy exhibition, studying the beautiful young men in the paintings, I noticed that they all looked similar, too. Adonis, Narcissus, Hylas... even the doomed young sailor in Waterhouse's painting of The Siren.

Could it be that the same male model posed for all of them?

If so, who was he? I wanted to know. A Google search quickly took me to this excellent article by art historian Scott Thomas Buckle. While looking through some old sketchbooks in the V&A, he found a notebook with the names of some of Waterhouse's models. On the top of one page was the sketch of a young man and the notes: Harry Beresford, 19 St Olafs Rd, Fulham, SW, age 16 June 1896... dark hair

One of J.W. Waterhouse's sketchbooks

Scott Thomas Buckle did a bit of sleuthing and found an 'artist's model' aged 21 by that name living at that address in the 1901 census, so it all fit perfectly. Young Harry was living with his 42-year-old widowed mother. Buckle thinks Harry might have been of Italian descent like several other Italian artists' models in Fulham.

Harry Beresford & flipped sailor

Henry Beresford was born in 1880, so he would have been 16 when he modelled for Hylas; 19 years old for Adonis; 20 for the doomed Siren-enchanted sailor (up above); 20 for the head of Orpheus and 23 for Narcissus. But wait! The man in the sketchbook looks a bit bloated, doesn't he? Not really an Adonis, is he?

There is a stern warning in the form of a small print note about Hylas & the Nymphs in The Royal Academy Catalogue: It is dangerous to speculate on the models for Waterhouse's figures; not only did he generalise and idealise the features of his models; so that the resulting figures conform to a small number of types, but he may also have used his well-trained visual memory to import reminiscences of favourite types into drawings made from other models.

St. Olaf's Rd, Fulham, London

Having taught art for ten years at primary level, I'm not sure I agree. My mantra in every lesson was: "Draw what you see, not what you know." Watch David Hockney sketching, for example. He spends 90% of the time looking at his subject and only 10% of the time looking at the paper.

Instead of having a small number of types, might not Waterhouse have had a small number of favourite models?

So I am going to blithely ignore that caveat and claim that Waterhouse liked Harry Beresford so much that he used him over and over. Without any expertise on the subject, I choose to believe that just over a hundred years ago a beautiful Adonis/Narcissus/Hylas/Orpheus lived in Fulham, just a few miles from where I am sitting now.

The Decameron 1916

One evening last week I did a mini-pilgrimage, to see if there was a blue plaque (a kind of historical marker put on houses where famous people have lived). I found a long street of post-Victorian apartment blocks. Not only was there no blue plaque, but Harry's house was no longer there. His street had been redeveloped, probably in the period between WWI and WWII.

I like to think that maybe Harry posed for the man with the lute in this 1916 painting called The Decameron (right). If it was Harry, he would have been 36 years old. It would mean that he collaborated with Waterhouse for twenty years, off and on, right up to the end.

J.W. Waterhouse died in 1917, a year after The Decameron was painted.

But what happened to Harry Beresford, the Adonis of Fulham? I would love to know.

P.S. You can see my blogs about some of Waterhouse's other paintings:
Adonis, Ariadne, Circe, Hylas, Narcissus, Odysseus and Orpheus.

P.P.S. I know much more about the Greeks and Romans than I do about J.W. Waterhouse. I write The Roman Mysteries, a series of history mystery books aimed at children aged 9+, especially those studying Romans and/or Greek Myths. The glossy BBC Roman Mysteries TV series did adaptations of some of these books. The DVDs are available in the UK and Europe. My new Roman Quests feature the boy as beautiful as Adonis and his identical twin.  

Orpheus & Orphée

In Greek mythology, Orpheus was the Thracian musician who was so talented that he could charm wild animals and trees and even rocks with his music.

He went with Jason on his quest for the Golden Fleece and had a novel way of deactivating the dangerous song of the Sirens: he played his music to drown out theirs.

One day Orpheus (pronounced or-fee-uss) fell in love with a beautiful girl called Eurydice, (pronounced yoor-id-iss-ee). On their wedding day she was running through the grass when a deadly viper bit her foot. She died in the arms of Orpheus, her betrothed. He was so distraught that he decided to go down to Hades and plead with Pluto to let her take him back.

You know the story. With his beautiful music Orpheus charms the ferryman who guides souls across the River Styx. With his beautiful music Orpheus charms Cerberus, the three-headed watchdog. With his beautiful music Orpheus even charms Pluto and Persephone, the King and Queen of the Underworld. They tell him he can take Eurydice back to the land of the living. But there is one condition. He must lead the way and not look back at her until they have safely arrived.

Orpheus sets out on the upward-sloping path, groping his way because it is so dark and silent. As he ascends, he becomes more and more worried. He can’t hear his beloved Eurydice behind him. He begins to wonder if it could be a trick of Pluto to get him to leave peacefully. When the light from the exit up ahead begins to dimly light the way, he is desperate to glance back, just to reassure himself that she is behind him. But he does not dare. He tells himself to be strong and to resist the temptation to look. Just a little longer!

Finally he steps into bright sunshine. Immediately he turns to see if his beloved Eurydice is behind him. She is! But she is still in the passage, still in the underworld. Even as he watches, she recedes from sight, her arms stretched out hopelessly and helplessly towards him. In some versions the messenger god Mercury sadly takes her arm and stops Orpheus from following.

Orpheus is stunned by his wife’s double death. He is in a torment of guilt and grief. If only he had waited a few more moments! Some say he renounced music. Others say he renounced women. For whatever reason, the frenzied followers of Dionysus called ‘maenads’ (pronounced mee-nadz), become angry with Orpheus and eventually kill him and tear him limb from limb.

Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus 1900

According to some accounts his head rolls into a stream and floats away, singing as it goes. The artist J.W. Waterhouse has chosen to paint the moment when two startled nymphs discover the beautiful, almost effeminate head with the long hair tangled in the chords of the lyre. Were these two among the crazed women of the night before? Or are they innocent?

We don’t really know. All we know is that Orpheus is finally reunited with his beloved Eurydice. In death.


Another artist fascinated by the myth of Orpheus was a multi-talented French genius named Jean Cocteau who flourished in the 50’s. He was not only a filmmaker but also a brilliant artist (see his head of Orpheus at the top right of this post) and poet. His black and white film Orphée, made from 1949-1950 soon after WWII, is considered a classic. (Orphée, pronounced or-fay, is the French for Orpheus) In Cocteau’s retelling of the myth, Orphée is a handsome poet who is adored by all. He is married to a pretty blonde named Eurydice, whom he loves, but in a twist to the tale, he also falls in love with Death, who is personified as a beautiful almost vampirical woman in black. Death is in love with him, too. When Eurydice dies, Orpheus goes to the underworld with a version of Mercury called Heurtebise, (pronounced... no, there is no way I can transliterate that!). A nice twist is that Heurtebise is in love with Eurydice. The scenes of the underworld were filmed in parts of Paris still in ruins from German bombing. They are some of the most haunting and dreamlike footage you will ever see. Orphée and Heurtebise bring Eurydice back from the underworld, but Orphée is forbidden to look at her ever again. Not just on the way back, but FOR EVER. (see above)

This is too much to ask, of course, and one day he accidentally catches sight of her in the rear view mirror of his car. She instantly returns to the underworld. Orphée goes back a second time and, in a poignant twist, Death decides to give him back Eurydice, even though she must suffer a punishment for this, and even though it means Orphée will not even remember her.

Cocteau introduces elements of other myths. For example, Death is like Persephone, who loved Adonis. Cocteau also likes the Narcissus myth. He uses mirrors a lot, in particular as the entrance to the underworld. These are some of the most breathtaking sequences. My favourite scene is where Orphée must put on magic gloves to pass through the mirror to the underworld. For this effect, Cocteau used a vat of mercury, because the actor’s fingers would have been visible beneath the surface of water. In this sequence there are several tricks. First, the footage of Orphée putting on the gloves is reversed. Second, the cameraman filmed his own gloved hands approaching those of the actor Jean Marais, who is in an identical room on the other side of the ‘mirror’. Third, the camera was tilted 90% to film the hands going into the vat of mercury. You can see the mirror sequence HERE.

The strongest reference to the Narcissus myth is in a sequence where Orphée awakens and hovers over a mirror-like pool. (below)

For me this is especially fascinating as I’m currently working on my own reworking of the Narcissus myth.

I was inspired to write this after visiting a Waterhouse exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. You can watch Orphée on the Criterion DVD (US) and in Europe and the UK there is an excellent DVD produced by the BFI with extras including an audio commentary and booklet about the making and makers of the film.

P.S. Thanks to Rod McKie, my twitterpal, for recommending that I re-visit Cocteau's 1950 masterpiece!

P.P.S. I was so inspired by this painting that I wrote my own Ode to Orpheus called Thracian O.

Narcissus by Waterhouse

The myth of Narcissus is a famous one.

Narcissus was a beautiful Greek shepherd of fifteen who cruelly scorned all those who loved him, including a nymph called Echo. She followed him around, echoing the final words of his sentences but was so thoroughly ignored that she pined away to nothing until only her voice remained. The Roman poet Ovid is one of those who tells the story and Waterhouse has almost certainly used his account. Here is the story as Ovid told it and Waterhouse painted it.


One day, while hunting in the woods, Narcissus comes to a pristine pool of water and bends over it to drink. Mirrors were almost unknown in those times - especially to rustic shepherds - and when he sees his reflection, he thinks there is a beautiful youth under the water. The youth seems to be alive and responding. When Narcissus smiles, so does the youth. The youth is so beautiful that Narcissus falls in love. He bends forward to kiss the boy in the water and the 'boy' rises up to meet him. But just when the moment of consummation should occur, just when their lips should touch, the boy's image blurs and ripples and Narcissus gets a mouthful of water.

Eventually Narcissus realises it is his own reflection in the water but he still cannot bear to pull himself away. He has fallen in love with himself. Like Echo, who is watching him, he will pine away to almost nothing. He will become a flower, nodding its head over the reflection in a pool. You can see the flower at his feet. The narcissus is another name for a daffodil, which I have always thought is a rather boring flower for Narcissus to turn into.

Notice that Waterhouse has used the same boy model as he used for Hylas and the Nymphs. That dark hair, the well-shaped head, those perfect features, the smooth limbs. He is not at all feminine, but he is beautiful. Waterhouse has painted his sunhat on the ground to his right and his quiver of arrows on his left, just by the edge of the painting. The quiver makes us think of the god of love. In Roman art, Cupid is often shown as a baby with bow and arrows, but in Greek mythology Eros was an adolescent, like Narcissus. He was beautiful and smooth enough to be desired by both men and women.

Today we call someone a 'narcissist' when they are obsessively self-centered and have no empathy for others.

I am basing my next book, Brother of Jackals, around the myth of Narcissus, but in a way it's never been done before. This painting is one of my inspirations. Thank you, Ovid. Thank you, Waterhouse.

P.S. J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite was an exhibition at London's Royal Academy in 2009. It has now finished.
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Hylas by Waterhouse

I often steal plots from Greek myths. After all, their authors are long-dead and can't sue me. For my ninth Roman Mystery, The Colossus of Rhodes, I used the Voyage of Jason and his Argonauts as the structure for my Roman detectives' search for a criminal mastermind.

In the myth, Jason is on a quest for the Golden Fleece and he has assembled many heroes on board his ship the Argo. For example Hercules and his special friend Hylas, a beautiful youth.

In The Colossus of Rhodes, I get Flavia and her friends match the crew of their boat, the Delphina, with the crew of the mythical Argo. Here is the list Flavia and her friends compose:

Lupus the ship-owner is like Jason, the Brave Hero on a Quest
Flavia Gemina is like Atalanta, the speedy Heroine
Jonathan would like to be Peleus, a Hero and father of Achilles
Nubia has agreed to be Hercules, because both wear lionskins
Captain Geminus (a twin) is Castor, Pollux's mortal Brother
Aristo (a talented musician) is Orpheus, whose Lyre tamed Beasts
Bato (former junior magistrate) is Mopsus, a Wise Soothsayer
Flaccus (aristocratic snob) is Acastus, arrogant son of King Pelias
Zetes (Flaccus's slave-boy) is Zetes, the Hero who could fly
Silvanus (handsome youth) is Hylas, young Squire of Hercules
Atticus (old and Greek) can be Argus, who built the Argo
Punicus (Phoenician helmsman) is Tiphys, Helmsman on the Argo
(pp 24-25)

In my book, Flavia makes Silvanus, a handsome Ostian youth, correspond to Hylas. This could be bad news for Silvanus. The original story of Hylas goes like this:

Jason and his crew have anchored somewhere on the coast of Bithynia to take on water. Hercules and his boyfriend Hylas go off to fetch water but Juno, Hercules's great enemy, sees a chance to torment him. She makes sure that Hercules and Hylas are separated. She then tells a beautiful huntress nymph called Dryope that there is a handsome boy in the woods who would make a perfect husband. His name is Hylas.


The poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus (played by Ben Lloyd-Hughes above) tells the story like this:

Dryope the huntress nymph flushes a swift deer out of the trackless woods and tricks Hylas into pursuing it, away from Hercules. The stag leads him far away to a place where a bright fountain gushes forth. With a single bound the deer leaps over the pool and is gone. Disappointed, the handsome youth finally stops his pursuit. As sweat bathes his limbs and his chest rises and falls, he greedily sinks beside the pleasant stream. The dappled light that shifts and plays upon the lake shows the gleam of his beautiful body. He does not notice the nymph's shadow or the perfumed scent of her hair or the splash of water as she rises up to embrace him. He cries out to Hercules for help as she throws her smooth arms around his neck, but in vain. Hercules is far away and cannot hear him, and the lovely nymph she draws him down into the water, her strength helped by his falling weight.

In the painting by Waterhouse (below) the painter makes the scene much more watery and adds six more nymphs, bringing their total number to a mystical seven. We see Hylas with his water jug, entranced by their beauty. If you go to the Waterhouse exhibit at the Royal Academy, be sure to invest an extra £3 in the audio guide. The guide tells us that the nymphs eyes are black with desire and that the exchange of looks between Hylas and the head nymph Dryope is almost mesmeric. She is hypnotising him, bewitching him, seducing him. She wants to draw him out of the world, into a life of watery pleasure. He is captivated by her beauty and he is unconsciously leaning forward. At any moment he will plunge into the water.


According to some accounts, Hylas falls in and drowns. According to others he stays with the nymphs to love them and be loved. But in every case, Hercules and the Argonauts never see him again.

In my book, the young Ostian crewmember named Silvanus goes for water on an island and never comes back. Was he also taken by nymphs? Or did something more sinister occur?

Maybe it's a coincidence, but Waterhouse loved water. It appears in at least half the paintings in the exhibition. He also liked to use symbols. For example, long hair. To Waterhouse, long hair was a symbol of feminine seductiveness. Check out his painting of 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci'. She is wrapping her luscious locks around the neck of a handsome, hapless knight. His armour will not protect him against her perfumed tresses.

Notice, too, that the handsome young model Waterhouse uses is the same one who posed for two other archetypes of Greek male beauty: Narcissus and Adonis. I think his is also the head of Orpheus, a painting not in this particular exhibition.


Back to Hylas and the Nymphs. See how that one nymph to the right of Dryope is seductively fluffing her hair? And the nymph between Hylas and Dryope holds something in her hands. Pearls. You don't notice them until you're standing right in front of the painting. She seems to be offering the pearls to Hylas. Or is it something more sinister? Waterhouse knew (and the commentary tells us) that pearls were thought to be the tears of drowned men.

Run, Hylas! Run!

N.B. J.W.Waterhouse: The Modern Pre-Raphaelite was an exhibition at London's Royal Academy in 2009. It has now finished.