Tristan and Isolde with the Potion

Tristan and Isolde with the Potion, painted in 1916 and now in the Art Renewal Center collection, depicts the central scene of the medieval romance in which Tristan and Isolde mistakenly drink a love potion intended for Isolde's betrothed King Mark, binding them in an adulterous passion that destroys them both. The legend, transmitted through medieval French, German, and English texts and enormously amplified in Victorian cultural awareness by Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde (1865), was deeply embedded in the Romantic and late Victorian imaginations as the supreme story of overwhelming, transgressive love. Waterhouse's 1916 treatment is among his last major literary subjects, bringing this late Pre-Raphaelite favourite into his final period of warm, freely handled painting.

The scene of two figures sharing a cup on a ship provides a compact, intimate composition. Waterhouse stages the moment of the potion's consumption with attention to the figures' postures and expressions — the moment before the love-spell fully takes hold, or the moment of first overwhelming sensation. The maritime setting, warm and hazy, envelops the figures in golden light.