The Lady of Shalott
John William Waterhouse (1888)
John William Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott fixes the tragic instant when the cursed Lady chooses to loose her mooring and drift toward Camelot. The released <strong>chain</strong>, the guttering <strong>candles</strong>, and the tapestry spilling over the boat narrate a passage from sheltered artifice to fatal reality. Waterhouse fuses late <strong>Pre-Raphaelite</strong> symbolism with elegiac atmosphere to stage beauty caught between <strong>agency</strong> and <strong>doom</strong> <sup>[1]</sup><sup>[2]</sup><sup>[3]</sup>.
