Lamia

Lamia, painted in 1905 and now at Auckland Art Gallery, depicts the creature from Greek mythology who was a Libyan queen transformed by Zeus into a child-devouring monster, or, in Keats's 1820 poem, a serpent-woman who temporarily assumes human form to pursue a young Corinthian philosopher. Keats's Lamia was the principal source for Victorian artists, and it was the poem's central image — a beautiful woman who is in truth a serpent — that attracted Waterhouse. He had previously painted a Lamia in 1905, and the Auckland canvas represents his mature engagement with the subject. The lamia figure belongs to the broader category of fatal or metamorphic women in classical mythology that Waterhouse found endlessly compelling: Circe, Medea, the Sirens, the Nymphs.

The serpent-woman's dual nature presents a compositional challenge: the transition between serpentine lower form and human upper body, or the suggestion of a woman who conceals an inhuman identity within a beautiful exterior. Waterhouse handles this through subtle colouring — iridescent greens and blues in the drapery that echo snake-scale patterns — rather than explicit zoomorphic transformation.