John
William Waterhouse has always been a secret pleasure of Brendan.
While girls cut out pictures of Usher and Justin Timberlake to tape
into their journals, he snipped Waterhouse’s paintings out of
decommissioned library books. It was his mother that had started him
on his love of Waterhouse. She’d read aloud to him from Shakespeare
while he was still in the cradle, and poured into his young mind
tales of Greek and Roman mythology while on car rides to the market. Brendan could still recall her voice was she pushed the shopping
trolley slowly down the grocery store aisles, murmuring art criticism
into his toddler ears.
“I
often wonder if the Victorians that first viewed Waterhouse’s
canvases ever felt the same wicked attraction to the nubile bodies of
nymphs and demi-goddesses scampering through his oil paints.”
When
he hit puberty, Brendan finally began to see his mother’s
fascination with Waterhouse, though Brendan's attractions were far
less aesthetic than his mother’s. The dab of shadow hinting to
Circe’s breast beneath a sheer tunic was now a secret thrill. A
single brushstroke created a whisper of seduction keener than a
Siren’s song in his ears. Mythology and fantasy and sexuality
carefully diffused in hints and touches to protect the delicate
sensibilities. He wondered with the same vague imaginations as his
mother if the pale blush upon the cheeks of a young Victorian
governess equal to the rosy glow of Boreas’ face?
Given
the opportunity to see a Waterhouse firsthand, Brendan could hardly
contain his joy, though he had to. After all, what seventeen year old
boy was giddy to see a collection of paintings on loan from the
Manchester Art Museum when they were being forced to attend on a
field trip?
Brendan waited on a baited breath as the school bus pulled to an idling stop
before the art museum. His teacher was prattling on over the
indignant voices of his peers. She tried, somewhat in vain, to
explain the assignment to the class. Brendan had already memorized
it. Find a painting that moves you, then do research into the themes
of the painting and describe how it made you feel. Brendan had his
heart set on Waterhouse already and took comfort in the fact that
only his teacher would read his final assignment.
He
spared not a glance for the Wagner, the Stubbs, or the Burges. His
heart could want only for Waterhouse. And there, hung above a low,
ebony cabinet, against the dusky red wall, was Hylas
and the Nymphs. Brendan stood rooted before the painting, oblivious to the rest of
the gallery.
Ringed
by the bare breasted water nymphs with scattering of lily pads to
protect their decency, the beautiful Greek youth Hylas leans over the
water’s edge, water urn dangling, forgotten, from his fingertips.
The scene hangs precariously between action and respite, beauty and
death, erotica and art. Hylas’s sable curls and golden skin stand
in stark contrast to the nymph’s ivory bodies and long, auburn
manes. Their eyes are dark and predatory, coaxing and beguiling Hylas
into the water. Brendan could hear his mother’s voice floating through his head; “Legend
tells us that Hylas joins the nymphs in the water, to drown in sexual
bliss or simply in his demise.”
Waterhouse’s dark eyed, nubile nymphs seem to suggest either fate
is possible.
Brendan's knees weakened as he tried to catch his breath. He’d been so young,
listening to his mother’s endless murmuring of myths and tales. It
had become a blur in his head, a shifting wall of endless color and
sound that had never really made sense to his young mind until now.
Brendan's seated himself on the leather bench opposite the painting as his
mother’s voice crept into his mind from all those years past.
“I
think of the other half of the myth, the story Waterhouse’s
painting is ignoring,” she’d whispered to him as she’d tucked
him into bed around age four. He could still make out his pale face
in the moonlight as she perched on the edge of his mattress. “Hylas
was beloved to Hercules, brought on to the Argos to join Jason’s
quest for the Golden Fleece. By the time the Argonauts had set sail,
Hercules had already sealed his fate as a hero by completing his
twelve labors. He was already worshiped as a demigod by the time he
set foot on the deck of the Argos with Hylas at his side. Hylas was
Hercules’ arms bearer, a spoil of war when Hercules killed Hylas’
father, Theiodamas.
Hylas was a prince and a warrior, favored by Hercules above all
other. In 300 BC the Greek poet Theocritus
wrote ‘We are not the first mortals to see beauty in what is
beautiful. No, even Amphitryon's
bronze-hearted son, who defeated the savage Nemean
lion,
loved a boy—charming Hylas, whose hair hung down in curls.’ The
word catamite
is left hinted upon the lips of poets and writers from Edmund Spencer
to Christopher Marlowe and Oscar Wilde.”
She
had paused there, with those funny sounding names still thick on her
tongue. Brendan remembered that she’d looked sad as she turned her
face away. Her voice held thrall over his dark, quiet bedroom.
“I
think of Hercules searching desperately for his beloved Hylas.
Searching so long, in fact, that the Argonauts decided to abandon him
in Mysia. I imagine Hercules weeping as he scours the riversides,
perhaps discovering Hylas’ forgotten urn abandoned on the banks.
Calling out Hylas’ name as he dives into the waters, begging the
nymphs to bring Hylas back to him. All alone in the dark waters,
weeping for his lost boy while his compatriots sail away without a
second thought. What if he had found Hylas’ body, ravished by those
unforgiving waters? Would he have held Hylas’ lifeless body in his
arms? Arms that had once held up the world, that had wrestled
Cerberus, arms that done the impossible time and time again. But now,
there he stood holding his most precious treasure and for all his
strength he could not give life back to Hylas. Would he press his
lips to Hylas’ once more, breathing into them a final prayer?”
Brendan's lungs tugged at his throat, clawing for a breath he hadn't realized
he’d been holding. He felt the tears pool at the corner of his eyes
like a warning, but he let them gather unheeded. They broke and
rushed down his cheeks with unchecked vigor.
Brendan wept. Not at the beauty of Waterhouse’s brushstrokes, or at the
flush in the cheeks of the nymphs, or in the golden hue of Hylas’
skin. He mourned for Hercules because there was no one else left that
would. He wept because a painting of Hercules holding Hylas to his
breast didn't hang upon the gallery wall. He wept because
Waterhouse’s brush didn't craft Hercules’ tears with depth and
agony. He wept because no Victorian could gasp in moral outrage at
the sensuality in Hercules’ embrace as he clung to Hylas. He wept
because while he was sure that such a painting could not have graced
the walls of the gallery in 1896, he wasn't sure they’d be
allowed in the gallery even today.
