Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses

Circe Offering the Cup to Ulysses, painted in 1891 and now at Gallery Oldham, depicts the moment in Homer's Odyssey when the enchantress Circe offers a drugged cup to Ulysses, whose crew she has already transformed into swine. Waterhouse explored Circe's complex figure across multiple canvases — the 1891 Circe Invidiosa shows her poisoning the sea where Scylla bathes — finding in her a figure who combined beauty, intelligence, sexual allure, and genuine menace in a way that fascinated him throughout his career. This frontal presentation of Circe directly offering the cup to the viewer places us in Ulysses's position, making the painting unusually confrontational and implicating the viewer in the scene's drama. Gallery Oldham holds it as one of its major Victorian works.

The frontal composition with Circe directly facing the viewer is unusual in Waterhouse's work and creates an unusually direct dramatic impact. Behind her, the sea with Ulysses's ship visible in the background provides depth. Her mirror on the wall shows the transformed swine in reflection — a standard iconographic detail — which Waterhouse renders as a secondary narrative element. The colour scheme privileges warm purples, ochres, and golds appropriate to the Aegean setting.