Echo and Narcissus

The story of Echo and Narcissus

Narcissus lies flat on the bank, chin in his hands, staring at the one face he will never get tired of. Across the pool, Echo sits with a hand at her collar, half-turned toward him, unable to say anything he has not said first. Waterhouse painted it in 1903, late in the Pre-Raphaelite story, and it belongs to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool. What holds people is the stillness: nobody moves, the water barely ripples, and the whole tragedy is in the space between two figures who are only a few feet apart.

On a wall, the painting is a cool, green landscape with two warm accents. The palette is moss, olive, and gray-green water, with Echo's ivory gown and the single red cloak on Narcissus pulling the eye. It suits a bedroom, a bathroom, a reading room, or a hallway, and it fits English-country, Victorian, cottage, and botanical-leaning interiors. It is a wide image with a lot of foliage, and it rewards size. The Large at 42.1 × 24 in is the one that makes the pool feel real, and the Extra Large at 63.1 × 36 in will carry an entire wall behind a bed or a sofa. The Medium at 28.1 × 16 in is right above a dresser.

Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs is the same pool with a crueler cast, and The Lady of Shalott is his other great picture of someone drifting toward what they cannot have. Millais's Ophelia is the Pre-Raphaelite water scene that started it all. More from John William Waterhouse.

We print from a public-domain photograph of the Walker Art Gallery canvas, in our own studio, keeping the muted greens true to the original rather than pushing them brighter.