‘She was a gordian shape of dazzling hue,
Vermilion-spotted, golden, green, and blue;
Striped like a zebra, freckled like a pard,
Eyed like a peacock, and all crimson barr'd;
And full of silver moons, that, as she breathed,
Dissolv'd, or brighter shone, or interwreathed
Their lustres with the gloomier tapestries—
So rainbow-sided, touch'd with miseries,
She seem'd, at once, some penanced lady elf,
Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self.’

Keats, Lamia, 1820

This is a sketch for the head of one of Waterhouse’s most beautiful enchantresses, Lamia the wood-nymph described in John Keats’ 1820 poem. Transformed by the God Hermes from her incarnation as a snake into a lissom maiden, she seduced the unwitting Lucius and was only returned to her reptilian self by the sage Apollonius on her wedding day. Waterhouse painted a red-haired model gazing up into the spell-bound face of the armoured Lucius, in a forest glade, her body entwined by a sloughed serpent-skin. Waterhouse had painted a similar scene of a knight caught in a femme-fatale's thrall in 1893 La Belle Dame sand Merci (Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt) which was also inspired by Keats' poetry.

In 1904 and 1905 Waterhouse painted several versions of Lamia based on the Keats’ poem, one of which was exhibited at the Royal Academy that year (private collects ion). This version was purchased from the exhibition by Sir Alexander Henderson, First Lord Faringdon who owned a large collects ion of pictures by Waterhouse – it was subsequently owned by Sir Jeremiah Colman the famous mustard manufacturer. Two further versions are of similar size (around 57 by 36 inches) and were probably worked on simultaneously as was Waterhouse’s usual way of working. They remained in the artist’s studio at his death and were included in the sale of its contents at Christies in 1926 – lot 23 was almost identical to the Royal Academy exhibit of 1905 and sold for 100 guineas (now in Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand). Lot 16 in the same sale sold for only 6 guineas and is likely therefore to be incomplete or a sketch.

The origins of the name Lamia have their roots in classical mythology, the Queen of Libya taken as a lover by Zeus, punished by Hera and transformed into a child-eating monster, half woman and half serpent. She was a figure of terror, an insatiable vampire who had the ability to remove her eyes and to see into the future, akin to the Gorgons and Echidna, whereas Keats and Waterhouse lessened her poisonous reputation. In 1909 Waterhouse returned to the story of Lamia and acknowledged the Classical origin of myth when he painted Lamia (private collects ion) as a type of water-nymph admiring herself reflected in the still waters of a pond, dressed in a rose-pink toga and wrapped in a python-skin.

Two pencil sketches for the head of Lamia c,1904-5 are known (one in the collects ion of Dr. Dennis T. Lanigan in Canada and the other at the Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut). Both appear to depict different models, one of which may or may not be Miss Muriel Foster whose name and address are written beside it. Neither drawings appear to depict the same model who posed for the present sketch.
 
Similar oil sketches include Nymphs Finding the Head of Orpheus, A Sketch of the Nymph at the Left (Christie's London, 16 June 2010, lot 174), The Love Philtre (Sotheby's London, 13 July 2010, lot 39), Vain Lamorina (Sotheby's London, 19 November 2013, lot 3), Female Head Study for A Naiad (Christie's London, 14 December 2016, lot 38) and Study of the Head of Venus in The Awakening of Adonis (Sotheby's London, 15 December 2016, lot 15).