Searching for Muriel Foster

JW Waterhouse (1849–1917) painted six versions of the Greek mythological figure of Lamia derived from Keats’s poem of the same name, about a creature half-serpent, half-beautiful young woman who draws men to their death. The principal finished version is that of 1905 where the temptress is seen draped in a flimsy robe accompanied by the sloughed-off remnants of snakeskin (Pl 1, Pl 1a). It was praised by Anthony F Hobson as being ‘one of the most beautiful and admirable of Waterhouse’s fantasies’ [1]