Johannes Antonius (Antoon) van Welie was born in the small town of Afferden, Gelderland. After studying art in Belgium, he quickly gained critical acclaim in Paris. Dividing his time between Paris, London and Rome, Van Welie maintained a studio in Vatican City, receiving Papal commissions. A protagonist of the international Symbolist movement in his early career, Van Welie became the most celebrated Dutch portraitist of his generation, attracting commission from European high society and celebrities, including Sarah Bernhardt and Isadora Duncan and exhibited at the Paris galleries of Bernheim Jeune and George Petit.

Van Welie’s Symbolist style was highly unusual at a time when Dutch taste remained largely traditional. His fascination mythology and fairy tales, however, aligned him more closely with international contemporaries such as Fernand Khnopff, Franz von Stuck, and Jan Toorop. Love and ill-fated yearning were Van Welie’s dominant themes, drawing inspiration from sources as varied as Wagner’s tragic opera Tristan and Isolde and Shakespeare’s doomed heroine Ophelia. The present Echo is based on the story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

The talkative nymph Echo, much admired by Venus for her magnificent voice, incurs the wrath of Juno after misleading her about her husband Jupiter’s whereabouts. As punishment, Juno curses Echo, allowing her only to repeat the words of others, unable to speak independently. The moment depicted is after Echo falls hopelessly in love with Narcissus, who cruelly rejects her. Silently, Echo prays to Venus, who grants her release from her suffering by disembodying her, leaving only her voice—a phenomenon we know today as an echo. Narcissus, doomed by his own vanity, wastes away infatuated with his own reflection. After his body has fully disappeared, the flower bearing his name emerges in his place.