Circe and Scylla. c.1886. Oil on canvas. 39 1/4 x 27 1/2 inches (99.7 x 69.8 cm). Collection of Sudley House, Liverpool, accession no. WAG 303. Image courtesy of Sudley House, Museums of Liverpool, under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial licence (CC BY-NC). [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
This painting was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1886, no. 6, and then later exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, no. 151. It is the second of Strudwick's exhibited works to feature a subject taken from Greek mythology. Strudwick himself explained the subject in a letter to the painting's first owner George Holt, who bought it in June 1890 from Strudwick's studio:
Scylla was greatly loved by Glaucus, one of the deities of the sea. She scorned his addresses, and he, to render her more propitious, applied to Circe, whose knowledge of herbs and incantations was universally admitted. Circe no sooner saw him than she became enamoured of him, and instead of giving the required assistance, attempted to make him forget Scylla, but in vain. To revenge herself, Circe poisoned the stream where Scylla bathed; and no sooner had the nymph touched the water than she was changed into a frightful monster. This sudden metamorphosis so terrified her that she threw herself into that part of the sea which separates the coast of Italy from Sicily, where she was changed into rocks which continue to bear her name. The picture represents Circe squeezing the fatal juice into the stream and Scylla descending the rocks to bathe. [qtd. Morris 440]
Steven Kolsteren has described the composition of the painting:
In this brownish-dark painting, the female victim and the femme fatale of many Pre-Raphaelite works have been combined in a single composition. Strudwick probably knew Burne-Jones's The Wine of Circe and Rossetti's sonnet for this picture, but he depicted another part of the story. Circe appears in the opening of her cave, throwing poison into the sea, while, on the right, Scylla is descending the slope to bathe in the same sea. She is totally ignorant of the fatal deed of the sorceress which will turn her into a horrible monster. The two types of women are clearly opposed. The innocent victim is half-naked, dressed in white; the fatal woman wears dark garments. She is outlined against the dark recess of her cave, whereas Scylla is shown against a white sky visible through the trees. Both openings isolate the women from their surroundings. [3]
Contemporary Reviews of the Painting
F.G. Stephens discussed the work extensively in The Athenaeum, detecting the influence of Mantegna, but also pointing out what he felt were the painting's deficiencies:
Very poetical is Mr. J. M. Strudwick's Circe and Scylla (6), in which the painter continues to proclaim his allegiance to Mantegna (or Mocetto). The witch stands at the entrance of her cave and squeezes a spongeful of sirups red as wine into the headwaters of a fountain. In the distance is the nymph hastening to bathe. Scylla's bathing costume is more proper than Brighton beach demands, and she is descending a series of those rocks which are invariably at the service of Mantegnesque designers, who, contrary to the practice of other men, contrive their figures first and then adjust the ground for them to stand on. Consequently Scylla has a convenient flight of steps, while Circe's cave fits her figure very neatly. The slabs of rock resemble the wing-pieces and "flies" of theatres. There is something childish in this, and it is unworthy of so careful a painter as Mr. Strudwick, who, his whims apart, draws and paints with taste and care. Scylla, although unbathed, is already very lean, while a god so jolly as Glaucus would not look twice on a Circe so burnt up as Mr. Strudwick's. An effective point, always to be found in Mantegnesque designs, is the Circean snake, which seems to climb the red column of the poison falling from the witch's hand into the fountain. This is a telling idea in the mode of the Renaissance, which revelled in poetic extravagances of the sort. Circe's garments of bronze shot with gold and marone, and her complexion – darkened as with smoke of necromancy – suggest the gloom and horror of her life. The chestnut trees near the cave are worthy of Styx's banks. There is good colour in the picture. [651]
A reviewer for The Spectator found much to admire although he considered it rather derivative of the work of Edward Burne-Jones:
A little Circe and Scylla, by Mr. Strudwick, hung near this, takes us at once to "the other side of the moon," and shows us a good little pupil of Mr. Burne Jones, echoing very faithfully, though in rather brown tints, his master's work. A weird figure, dropping poison into a spring from which a viper rises to meet her hand, and a little girl in the background, tripping down over impossible mountains to bathe in the poisoned water, - such is the mise en scène. The work is elaborate, fanciful, and neat, with a touch of imaginative power, and shows great patience and skill, but it has no reference to Nature, and its dreams are those indefensible ones, - the dreams of others. If a man will paint nightmares, at least they should be his own. [610]
The enchantress Circe, who featured in Homer's epic poem The Odyssey. was a popular subject for Victorian painters with versions of her story by painters like Burne-Jones, John Collier, and John William Waterhouse and in a statuette by Bertram Mackennal. Waterhouse's Circe Invidosa of 1892 treats the same subject as Strudwick showing the femme fatale poisoning the water where Scylla goes to bathe.
Circe and Scylla was the first painting by Strudwick acquired by the collector George Holt who then went on to commission three more paintings from the artist. Both Holt and Strudwick's other great patron, William Imrie, lived in Mossley Hill, a suburb of south Liverpool.
Bibliography
"Art. The Grosvenor Gallery." The Spectator LIX (8 May 1886): 610-11.
Blackburn, Henry. Grosvenor Notes London: Chatto & Windus (May 1886): 5-6.
Christian, John. The Last Romantics. The Romantic Tradition in British Art. London: Lund Humphries, 1989, cat. 45, 92 & 94.
Circe and Scylla. Art UK. Web. 28 September 2025.
Circe and Scylla. Liverpool Museums. Web. 28 September 2025.
"Current Art." The Magazine of Art IX (1886): 347.
Kolsteren, Steven. "The Pre-Raphaelite Art of John Melhuish Strudwick (1849-1937)." The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic Studies I: 2 (Fall 1988): 3 & 11, no. 14.
Morris, Edward. Victorian & Edwardian Paintings in the Walker Art Gallery & at Sudley House. London: HMSO,1996, 439-40.
Stephens, Frederic George. "The Grosvenor Exhibition." The Athenaeum No. 3055 (15 May 1886): 651.
Created 28 September 2025