Phyllis and Demophoon

Painted in 1905, Phyllis and Demophoon draws on the story from Ovid's Heroides in which the Thracian princess Phyllis, having fallen in love with Demophoon and been abandoned by him, dies of grief and is transformed into an almond tree. When Demophoon returns and embraces the tree, it blooms. Waterhouse treats this poignant myth of abandonment, metamorphosis, and posthumous reunion with his characteristic empathy for female suffering within classical narrative. The subject had been treated memorably by Edward Burne-Jones in 1870, and Waterhouse's return to it in 1905 shows his ongoing dialogue with Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movement subjects. The painting belongs to a later phase when Waterhouse's draughtsmanship and compositional authority were at their fullest development.

The drama of the embrace between the mortal figure and the tree-form is staged as a tightly interlocked composition, the two figures — one flesh, one bark — merging at the canvas centre. Waterhouse contrasts warm skin tones with the cooler greys and browns of the transforming tree form, and blossoms provide bright accent notes throughout.