Miranda

A 15-year-old girl sits on a rock on a shell-strewn beach, gazing intently at a small ship on the horizon.

This is an early work depicting Miranda, the heroine of Shakespeare's play The Tempest.

However, while many other painters competed to depict the 'dramatic tragedy of a ship torn apart by a magical storm,' the 26-year-old Waterhouse chose the 'calm' before the storm.

Despite being a character from a 17th-century story, she is clad in white garments reminiscent of ancient Greece.

This was not intended as a dramatic illustration of the story, but rather a result of his early classical approach, to which he was deeply devoted, aiming to portray the pure beauty of a contemplative woman herself.

Miranda, not screaming in the face of the storm, but simply gazing quietly at the ship of destiny.

It marks the quiet yet certain beginning of three important themes – 'water,' 'women,' and 'magic' – that he would continue to explore throughout his life.

This painting, as if capturing the calm before the storm on canvas, went missing for over 130 years immediately after its unveiling in 1875, quietly slumbering as a phantom work until its miraculous rediscovery in Scotland in 2004.