A sketch of a bear

This lively drawing of a bear was created by the Royal Academician John William Waterhouse as he planned an oil painting that depicts Circe, the comeliest sorceress in Greek mythology, with a group of animals. Daughter of the sun-god Helios and a sea nymph, Circe murdered her husband and fled to rule over an island where she offered visiting mariners a wine that transformed them into animals.

Waterhouse had been fascinated by Circe since at least 1891, when he exhibited his oil painting Circe Offering the Cup to Odysseus to great acclaim. Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, that compelling scene shows the hero approaching Circe cautiously; two of his unfortunate men appear as swine by her throne, and more can be seen in her circular mirror’s reflection. Ultimately Odysseus forced Circe to restore them to human form, took her as his lover, and stayed a year while his wife, Penelope, pined at home.

In 1912 Waterhouse returned to The Odyssey when he was commissioned to create a major painting for the Aberdeen Art Gallery and chose to depict Penelope ignoring the entreaties of her many suitors. Presumably that project rekindled his interest in her rival for Odysseus’s love, Circe, so the following year he undertook a large oil painting that was never finished or exhibited. After her abandonment, the enchantress sits pensively envisioning Odysseus’s subsequent encounter with the Sirens, which she is magically weaving in the tapestry at right. (Waterhouse had successfully exhibited a similar scene of that dangerous showdown in 1891.)
The large painting is particularly intriguing for the trio of animals - a baboon, a leopard, and a panther - who gaze at Circe across a table on which rests the overturned goblet from which they have foolishly drunk. Waterhouse worked hard to refine this complex composition, as evidenced by two oil sketches of Circe in profile, and by a quartet of simple pencil drawings that descended through his family. One sheet shows leopards on its recto and baboons on its verso. Another rather sketchy drawing depicts two baboons and a boar. The fourth imagines the entire scene, but now the animal at the rear is not a panther but a bear.

That last drawing provides the context necessary to fully appreciate this recently discovered drawing of a seated bear licking its paw. It is likely that Waterhouse made all of these animal sketches at the London Zoo in Regent’s Park - just a mile and a half from his studio-house at 10, Hall Road in St. John’s Wood. Many artists of the period visited this zoo to study its residents, and Waterhouse was particularly friendly with the well-known animaliers Briton Riviere R.A. (1840–1920) and Joseph Wolf (1820–1899).

The present drawing demonstrates that Waterhouse - then aged 64 and in precarious health – had not lost his knack for closely observing and deftly conveying the most salient aspects of his subject through pose, line, and shading. Perhaps because it is larger, coloured, and more fully developed, this sheet is unique among the Circe preparatory studies in being signed and dated - not only with the year but also with the month, something rare in Waterhouse’s oeuvre. It is possible that he presented it to someone as a gift - indeed, it looks like he retraced ‘1913’. This may explain why it does not seem to have passed down through his descendants as the other drawings did.

In the end, Waterhouse did not incorporate the bear into his oil painting of Circe, yet this charming study endures to remind us of his visual acuity and technical skill.

We are grateful to Peter Trippi for his assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.