The Sorceress

By 1911 Waterhouse had already painted Circe, the enchantress of the Odyssey who turns men into pigs, twice before. This is his third try, and it is the calmest of them. There is no cup held out, no victim, no spell in motion. Circe sits alone at a marble table in her study, among her books and bottles, an overturned wine cup beside her, thinking. The mood is closer to melancholy than menace. Waterhouse came out of the Pre-Raphaelite tradition, and by this date that whole taste for mythological women in richly furnished rooms was going out of fashion, pushed aside by newer movements coming out of Paris. He kept painting it anyway, almost to the end of his life. He made two versions of this composition, and both are in private hands, so it is a picture most people only ever see in reproduction.