Boreas

Boreas is an oil painting on canvas by John William Waterhouse, signed and dated 1903 at lower left and now in a private collection; it measures 94 by 68.8 cm.

The title names Boreas, the god of the north wind in Greek mythology, but the god himself does not appear. Instead Waterhouse shows his effect: a young girl walking through open country, buffeted by a gust that fills her veil like a sail. The Royal Academy notes of 1904 summed up the subject in a single sentence: in wind-blown draperies of slate-colour and blue, a girl passes through a spring landscape accented by pink blossom and daffodils.

Her head is turned and bowed toward the right as she leans into the wind, one arm raised over her head and the other gathering the grey veil around her, a yellow flower tucked into her dark hair. Her blue dress is patterned with pale rings, and the long grass at her feet is scattered with small yellow flowers; a blossoming tree rises at the right and dark pines stand on the horizon under a cloudy sky. Writers have remarked on the contrast between the calm of her face and the movement of the cloth around her.

After 1904 the painting dropped out of sight for about 90 years, and Anthony Hobson's 1989 biography of Waterhouse listed it as lost. Its reappearance on the market in the mid-1990s caused a stir. At Christie's in London on 29 March 1996, offered as lot 81 with an estimate of £300,000 to £400,000, it sold for £848,500, at that time a record price for a work by Waterhouse. It remains in private hands.