About this work
Flora sits, arms raised, to the right of centre as Zephyrus kisses her right arm from above. With her are three companion figures — echoing Botticelli's Graces — who rather than dancing are gathering flowers to braid into their hair, while other winds appear over the treetops.
Waterhouse uses a long horizontal canvas to stage the scene: Flora is seated in a garden surrounded by her maidens, wearing a dark wine-coloured gown with floral details and a bright red fabric wrapped around her legs, while the female figures around her are dressed in soft blue-grey, pink, and navy.
The palette runs through soft earthy tones and pastel shades, with bursts of floral colour drawing the eye across the canvas — a palette that evokes the freshness of spring and the gentle warmth of a breezy day. What strikes the viewer first is Flora herself: she looks directly upward at the approaching Zephyr, her arms arranged to convey both instinctive self-defence and a kind of openness to his advance.
*Flora and the Zephyrs* was painted in 1897, the year following *Hylas and the Nymphs*, the painting by which Waterhouse is perhaps best known to a modern audience.
He premiered the work at the Royal Academy's 1898 Summer Exhibition, by which time it had already been acquired by the celebrated collector George McCulloch.
The painting was inspired by Botticelli's *Allegory of Spring (Primavera)*, and for their subject both painters turned to Ovid, who chronicled the abduction of the nymph Chloris by Zephyrus, the west wind — and her transformation into Flora, Roman goddess of flowers, fruit, and spring.
Like *Hylas*, Flora faces an uncertain fate, and it is this sense of psychological imminence — causing the viewer to search for clues about the dramatic outcome — that places both paintings among the masterpieces of nineteenth-century Symbolist art.
After the turn of the century, Waterhouse's paintings became blander and more oblique in their storytelling, and seldom again did he achieve the psychological tension and frenzied excitement of *Flora and the Zephyrs*.
This is a painting that belongs in rooms with natural light and enough breathing space to let a wide, horizontal composition unfold — a hallway with generous wall space, a library, or a sitting room with classical leanings. Waterhouse balances movement and stillness masterfully, with Flora anchoring the composition and the swirling Zephyrs creating a sense of fluidity and harmony
