Eco y Narciso

Waterhouse painted this in 1903, when Britain was deep in a long love affair with Greek and Roman myth, and the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool bought it the same year. The story comes from Ovid. The nymph Echo, cursed so she can only repeat the last words others speak, has fallen for the beautiful youth Narcissus. He never looks up. He has caught sight of his own reflection in the still water and cannot pull himself away, and he will stay there until he wastes into the flower that carries his name. Waterhouse sets the two of them across a narrow stream, so close and so completely apart. Narcissus leans over his own face in the water. Echo sits opposite, clutching a tree, watching him watch himself. He is painted in strong red, the flush of self-love. Her robe is a softer, cooler pink, the quieter love that gets no answer. If you follow the edge of the water, little white narcissi are already pushing up out of the grass by his foot, the flower he is about to become, growing before he has even died.