Candles were a representation of life – two of the candles are already blown out, signifying that her death is soon to come. The Lady has a lantern at the front of her boat and a crucifix is positioned near the bow. She is pictured sitting on the tapestry she has woven. This is the moment that is pictured in Waterhouse's painting, as the Lady is leaving to face her destiny. After defying the curse by looking out the window at Camelot, the Lady has made her way to a small boat. She sat below the mirror and wove a tapestry of scenes she could see by the reflection. In the poem, the Lady had been confined to her quarters, under a curse that forbade her to go outside or even look directly out of a window her only view of the world was through a mirror. It pictures the titular character of Tennyson's poem, also titled The Lady of Shalott (1842).

The painting has the precisely painted detail and bright colours associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. The Lady of Shalott Looking at Lancelot, 1894 Waterhouse painted three versions of this character, in 1888, 18. It depicts a scene from Tennyson's poem in which the poet describes the plight and the predicament of a young woman, loosely based on the figure of Elaine of Astolat from medieval Arthurian legend, who yearned with an unrequited love for the knight Sir Lancelot, isolated under an undisclosed curse in a tower near King Arthur's Camelot. The Lady of Shalott an 1888 oil-on-canvas painting, is one of John William Waterhouse's most famous works. The Lady of Shalott was donated to the public by Sir Henry Tate in 1894 and is usually on display in Tate Britain, London, in room 1840. It is one of his most famous works, which adopted much of the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, though Waterhouse was painting several decades after the Brotherhood split up during his early childhood. It is a representation of the ending of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1832 poem of the same name. The Lady of Shalott is a painting of 1888 by the English painter John William Waterhouse.

The lady of shalott poem by tennyson