Watergate
Only my love for natural art rivals that of my love for art. I consider the passing of the seasons a magnificient work of natural art. The way the same types of shrubbery are able to transmute themselves to combat the adversities God faces them with is simply breathtaking. As an example I shall describe the ways in which I remember my favorite tree on Baker Street, a place I visited often in hopes of seeing my future wife, changing. When I would walk to Gerty's photography studio in the frigid mornings of Febuary, I would not notice it due to its nakedness. However, as my passion grew hotter for Gertrude so did my number of visits, as well as the temperatures. So as Spring came and went I saw this tree develop almost every day into a beautiful one with wildly different shades of green and yellow, and covering a much larger surface area. This is what makes this work so astonishing to my eyes. If one season gives you the pleasure of a lifetime yet eventually leaves you because nature has taken its course, another will come and give you equally enjoyable experiences. If you replace the word season with woman in the prior sentence, I say it still holds true. Women, like seasons, will come and go, but their beauty will live on in your memory even if another takes its place. Even as my wife was so dear to me and I loved her with all my heart, it is hard for me to say any less of Gertrude. And so when I saw this in a gallery I visited, I didn't waste my chance and snatched it up instantly, for I knew the great reminder it would serve for me.
Editorial
Throughout this finding, the same qualities appear in this Lord Watergate's personality as one would expect from a well established man from the 19th century, a demographic very prone to misogyny at the time. What is found here is obviously well defined in the title, the different calendar seasons portrayed as women. What can be inferred by this selection of media and Lord Watergate's commentary is that he has had his fair share of women in his life, loving them all yet not enough to stay loyal to a single one after she leaves him or vice versa. His misogyny is evident in his simplified objectification of women to seasons, not even an object but a period of time. However, Victorian society and societies preceding it don't appear to disagree, since they shared "a long art-historical tradition originating in the Renaissance in which myth had been used as a vehicle for erotic representation." (Barrow 223) This work can be interpreted as the different season women being distinct forms of mother nature, and they were idealized for the sake of viewership pleasure and an increase in demand for its purchase. In this case it worked quite well on one Lord Watergate, who sought to remind himself of the value he holds of women and how easy it is to procure them. On top of it, he clearly wanted something pleasurable to look at, so the Renaissance tradition of eye-pleasing women serving as symbols for mythological deities seemed more than appealing for him to set his gaze on daily.
Works Cited
The Four Seasons Personified as Women. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America.
Barrow, Rosemary. "Toga Plays and Tableaux Vivants: Theatre and Painting on London’s Late-Victorian and Edwardian Popular Stage." Theatre Journal, vol. 62 no. 2, 2010, p. 209-226.