British Art and Turkish Coffee

‘Hylas and the Nymphs’, by John William Waterhouse, 1896It’s afternoon coffee time, yay! On the afternoons when I work from home I make a little pot of Turkish coffee (from fresh-ground beans). For years I have been using the same Scottish-made stoneware mug that was a birthday gift from my sister Star. It is printed with the John William Waterhouse’s painting Hylas and the Nymphs.

The caption on the painting in my book The Pre-Raphaelites, by Christopher Woods (Weidenfeld and Nicolson London, 1981) reads:

Hylas was squire to Heracles, one of the Argonauts. When they stopped on the island of Cios, Hylas went off in search of water, but was lured to his death by water nymphs. This picture is now Waterhouse’s best-known work, and has become one of the key images of the femme fatale in late Victorian art. Waterhouse’s style is a uniquely personal blend of fantasy and reality, and he is one of the few Victorian artists to paint the Greek myths convincingly.

And now my coffee’s finished already, boo!

No More Coffee :: Hornbecker // DreamCanvas // No flash