Waiting for William, John George Brown (1879)
At the same time that he was painting the fishermen of Grand Manan Island in Pull for the Shore (71.552), J. G. Brown was focusing on thematically related images of women seated or standing alone at water's edge and gazing wistfully out to sea. Among the loveliest of these is Waiting for William, in which a beautiful young woman, dressed in her finest clothes, surveys the watery horizon, longing for her beloved to return from the sea. With the point of her parasol, she has written his name -William- in the sand. Is William's return imminent, or is he late in coming home? Has he been lost at sea, never to return?
