Miranda

Miranda, painted in 1916 and one of Waterhouse's last major canvases, takes its subject from Shakespeare's The Tempest — the story of the young woman raised in isolation on a magical island who has never seen any man except her father Prospero. Miranda watches a distant ship in distress or observes the newcomers washed ashore with a mixture of wonder and compassion, famously declaring 'O brave new world, that has such people in't.' Waterhouse had long been drawn to Shakespeare's isolated, watching heroines — the Lady of Shalott offered a similar dramatic structure of a woman looking out from confinement toward the world. Miranda's oceanic island setting gave him an opportunity to combine figure, sea, and dramatic sky in a large-scale late composition.

The scale of the island setting and the theatrical sky require careful integration of atmospheric effects with the figure. Waterhouse's late handling is particularly fluent in sky passages, using broad, diagonal strokes for storm clouds. Miranda's figure is placed at the compositional edge or threshold, between the island's shelter and the exposed sea view, enacting her narrative position.