The Lady of Shalott, 1888 John William Waterhouse (1849-1917)

We create our paintings with museum quality and covering the highest academic standards. Once we get your order, it will be entirely hand-painted with oil on canvas. All the materials we use are the highest level, being totally artist graded painting materials and linen canvas.

We will add 1.6" (4 cm) additional blank canvas all over the painting for stretching.

High quality and detailing in every inch are time consuming. The reproduction of John William Waterhouse also needs time to dry in order to be completely ready for shipping, as this is crucial to not be damaged during transportation.
Based on the size, level of detail and complexity we need 8-9 weeks to complete the process.

In case the delivery date needs to be extended in time, or we are overloaded with requests, there will be an email sent to you sharing the new timelines of production and delivery.

TOPofART wants to remind you to keep patient, in order to get you the highest quality, being our mission to fulfill your expectations.

We not stretch and frame our oil paintings due to several reasons:
Painting reproduction is a high quality expensive product, which we cannot risk to damage by sending it being stretched.
Also, there are postal restrictions, regarding the size of the shipment.
Additionally, due to the dimensions of the stretched canvas, the shipment price may exceed the price of the product itself.

You can stretch and frame your painting in your local frame-shop.

Once the painting The Lady of Shalott is ready and dry, it will be shipped to your delivery address. The canvas will be rolled-up in a secure postal tube.

We offer free shipping as well as paid express transportation services.

After adding your artwork to the shopping cart, you will be able to check the delivery price using the Estimate Shipping and Tax tool.

The paintings we create are only of museum quality. Our academy graduated artists will never allow a compromise in the quality and detail of the ordered painting. TOPofART do not work, and will never allow ourselves to work with low quality studios from the Far East. We are based in Europe, and quality is our highest priority.

A flicker of extinguished flame clings to the tip of a dying candle. Just beside it, a crucifix leans into the bow of the boat, its presence quiet but insistent. We are already deep in a scene of passage - not only downriver, but between two realms.

Three taper candles stand at the prow: one has already gone out, another flickers low, and only the final still burns. The allegory is not subtle, nor is it meant to be. Time is running out. Waterhouse catches the Lady in her suspended finality, her white sleeve draped in the water, her fingers still holding the boat's edge, as if the gesture alone could stall fate.

Painted during Waterhouse’s brief engagement with plein air methods, the landscape teems with damp English lushness. Moss, reeds, the soft velvet of riverbank foliage - all rendered with a wet, tactile density. Greens shift through sage and olive into shadowy bottle tones. Even the light feels filtered, strained through branches and time. One imagines the rustle of leaves, the creak of wood on water, the Lady’s breath shallow in her throat.

Instead of drama, stillness reigns. Yet that stillness is weighted with consequence. The Lady’s gaze is tilted upward, her lips parted not in speech but something more elemental - a release, perhaps, or a final hymn. Her body, though passive, seems subtly torqued. The vertical thrust of her torso contrasts with the rightward slide of the boat, creating a tension, almost imperceptible, between resistance and surrender.

Waterhouse’s palette here is restrained, but never pale. The Lady’s gown, ostensibly white, is tinged with warm rose and pearl, catching reflections from the embroidered tapestry she sits upon - a riot of heraldic reds, golden ochres, and cobalt. That tapestry, which seems to gather all the labor of her cloistered life, now becomes her shroud. In one corner, a delicate passage of sfumato melds the textile with the watery blur of reeds, paint merging into water into myth.

Notice the chain, half submerged, freshly released from her hand. Painted with barely a dozen strokes, it’s almost an afterthought - and yet it anchors the whole scene. In loosening it, the Lady’s story has shifted from one of constraint to transgression.

Tennyson’s poetry had long enthralled the Pre-Raphaelites, but Waterhouse’s treatment eschews theatricality. Where Holman Hunt’s earlier version (1886) brims with literal symbolism, Waterhouse offers pathos without spectacle. His Lady is not caught in the act of disobedience, but in its echo - the long, irrevocable moment after choice has been made, when the world leans in and fate steps forward.

Perhaps it is this emotional delay, this suspended transition, that continues to speak. In an age of noise and momentum, her silent passage seems almost subversive. She does not cry out, does not flail. She simply releases the chain.

And waits.