THE BOAT | JOHN WATERHOUSE | 2021

A small luxurious boat… moored at a riverside dock.

Legends tell that a beautiful woman lived alone in a tower on an island by this river. One day, she glimpsed in her cursed mirror the reflected image of the fair knight Lancelot and chanced to gaze at him directly. The mirror cracked and a spell fell upon her. She drifted in her boat downstream "singing her last song" and died before she reached Camelot and her love.

In the immortal words of Tennyson :

And at the closing of the day,
She loosed the chain, and down she lay;
The broad stream bore her far away,
The Lady of Shalott.

The Boat is indeed a beautiful and haunting work of art.