Miranda
Date created: 1916
Miranda is a character is William Shakespeare's play The Tempest. The play was first performed around 1611.
Waterhouse painted versions of Miranda at the start and end of his career. The other versions are dated 1875 and 1916 (larger version of this painting). This picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy (No. 475) after Waterhouse's death in 1917, and subsequently sold by Christie's (Artist's sale, 23 July 1926). Signed and dated at lower right. There is an unfinished sketch of a woman verso.
"Like most of Waterhouse's heroines, Miranda is the plaything of events. She is also the personification of innocence: isolated on Prospero's isle, she speaks of Ferdinand [who survives from the shipwreck in the painting] as 'the third man that e'er I saw, the first that e'er I sighed for.'" (Anthony Hobson)
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