George Frederic Watts
Encyclopedia
George Frederic Watts, OM
(23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a popular English Victorian
painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist
movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope
(see image) and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
, London on the birthday of George Frederic Handel (after whom he was named), to the second wife of a poor piano
-maker. Delicate in health and with his mother dying while he was still young, he was home-schooled by his father in a conservative interpretation of Christianity as well as via the classics such as the Iliad
- the former put him off conventional religion for life, whilst the latter was a continual influence on his art. He showed artistic promise very early, learning sculpture from the age of 10 with William Behnes
, starting to devotedly study the Elgin Marbles
(later writing "It was from them alone that I learned") and then enrolling as a student at the Royal Academy
at the age of 18. He also began his portraiture career, receiving patronage from his close contemporary Alexander Constantine Ionides
, with whom he later came to be close friends. He came to the public eye with a drawing entitled Caractacus, which was entered for a competition to design murals for the new Houses of Parliament
at Westminster
in 1843. Watts won a first prize in the competition, which was intended to promote narrative paintings on patriotic subjects, appropriate to the nation's legislature. In the end Watts made little contribution to the Westminster decorations, but from it he conceived his vision of a building covered with murals representing the spiritual and social evolution of humanity.
The prize from the Westminster competition did, however, fund a long visit to Italy from 1843 onwards, where Watts stayed and became friends with the British ambassador Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland
and his wife Mary Augusta at their homes in Casa Feroni and the Villa Careggi. Also whilst in Italy Watts began producing landscapes and was inspired by Michelangelo
's Sistine Chapel
and Giotto
's Scrovegni Chapel
. In 1847, whilst still in Italy, Watts entered a new competition for the Houses of Parliament with his image Alfred
Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes by Encountering them at Sea, on a patriotic subject but using Phidean inspiration. Leaving Florence in April 1847 for what was intended to be a brief return to London, he ended up staying. Back in Britain he was unable to obtain a building in which to carry out his plan of a grand fresco based on his Italian experiences, though he did produce a 45 ft by 40 ft fresco on the upper part of the east wall of the Great Hall of Lincoln's Inn
entitled Justice, A Hemicycle of Lawgivers inspired by Raphael
's The School of Athens
(completed 1859). In consequence most of his major works are conventional oil paintings, some of which were intended as studies for the House of Life.
In his studio he met Henry Thoby Prinsep (for 16 years a member of the Council of India
) and his wife Sara (née Pattle). Watts thus joined the Prinsep
circle of bohemians, including Sara's seven sisters (including Virginia, with whom Watts fell in love but who married Charles, Viscount Eastnor
in 1850, and Julia Margaret Cameron
). Previously staying at 48 Cambridge Street then in Mayfair, in 1850 he helped the Prinseps into a 21-year lease on Little Holland House
and stayed there with them and their salon
for the next 21 years. (The building was the dower house on the Hollands' London estate in Kensington
, near the house of Lord Leighton.) One of only two pupils Watts ever accepted was Henry's son Valentine Cameron Prinsep
(the other was Roddam Spencer-Stanhope - both remained friends but neither of the two became major artists). While living as tenant at Little Holland House, Watts's epic paintings were exhibited in Whitechapel
by his friend and social reformer Canon Samuel Barnett
, and he finally received a commission for the Houses of Parliament, completing his The Triumph of the Red Cross Knight (from The Faerie Queene
) in 1852-53. He also took a short trip back to Italy in 1853 (including Venice, where Titian became yet more of an inspiration) and with Charles Thomas Newton
to excavate Halicarnassus
in 1856-57, via Constantinople and the Greek islands.
In the 1860s, Watts' work shows the influence of Rossetti
, often emphasising sensuous pleasure and rich color. Among these paintings is a portrait of his young wife, the actress Ellen Terry
, who was 30 years his junior – having been introduced by mutual friend Tom Taylor
, they married on 20 February 1864 just seven days short of her 17th birthday. When she eloped with another man after less than a year of marriage, Watts was obliged to divorce
her. Watts's association with Rossetti and the Aesthetic movement altered during the 1870s, as his work increasingly combined Classical
traditions with a deliberately agitated and troubled surface, in order to suggest the dynamic energies of life and evolution, as well as the tentative and transitory qualities of life. These works formed part of a revised version of the house of life, influenced by the ideas of Max Müller
, the founder of comparative religion
. Watts hoped to trace the evolving "mythologies of the races [of the world]" in a grand synthesis of spiritual ideas with modern science, especially Darwinian evolution.
With the lease on Little Holland House nearing its end and the building soon to be demolished, in the early 1870s he commissioned a new London home nearby from CR Cockerell (New Little Holland House, backing onto the estate of Lord Leighton) and acquired a house at Freshwater
on the Isle of Wight
- his friends Julia Margaret Cameron
and Lord Tennyson already had homes on the islands. To maintain his friendship with the Prinsep family as their children began leaving home, he built The Briary for them near Freshwater and adopted their relative Blanche Clogstoun. In 1877, his decree nisi
from Ellen Terry finally came through and the Grosvenor Gallery
was opened by his friend Coutts Lindsay
- this was to prove his ideal venue for the next ten years.
In 1886 at the age of 69 Watts re-married, to Mary Fraser-Tytler, a Scottish designer and potter, then aged 36. In 1891 he bought land near Compton, south of Guildford
, in Surrey
. The couple named the house "Limnerslease" (combining the words "limner" or artist with "leasen" or glean) and built the Watts Gallery
nearby, a museum dedicated to his work –- the first (and now the only) purpose-built gallery in Britain devoted to a single artist –- which opened in April 1904, shortly before his death. Watts's wife Mary had designed the nearby earlier Watts Mortuary Chapel
, which Watts paid for and also painted a version of The All-Pervading
for the altar
only three months before he died.
Many of his paintings are held at the Tate Gallery
– he donated 18 of his symbolic paintings to the Tate in 1897, and three more in 1900. Refusing the baronetcy twice offered him by Queen Victoria
, he was elected as an Academician to the Royal Academy in 1867 and accepted the Order of Merit
in 1902, in his own words on behalf of all English artists.
In his late paintings, Watts' creative aspirations mutate into mystical images such as The Sower of the Systems, in which Watts seems to anticipate abstract art
. This painting depicts God as a barely visible shape in an energised pattern of stars and nebulae. Some of Watts' other late works also seem to anticipate the paintings of Picasso's Blue Period
. He was also admired as a portrait painter. His portraits were of the most important men and women of the day, intended to form a "House of Fame". Many of these are now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery – 17 were donated in 1895, with more than 30 more added subsequently. In his portraits Watts sought to create a tension between disciplined stability and the power of action. He was also notable for emphasising the signs of strain and wear on his sitter's faces. Sitters included Charles Dilke, Thomas Carlyle
and William Morris
.
During his last years Watts also turned to sculpture. His most famous work, the 1902 large bronze statue Physical Energy, depicts a naked man on horseback shielding his eyes from the sun as he looks ahead of him. It was originally intended to be dedicated to Muhammad
, Attila
, Tamerlane
and Genghis Khan
, thought by Watts to epitomise the raw energetic will to power. A cast was placed at Rhodes Memorial
in Cape Town
, South Africa, honouring the grandiose imperial vision of Cecil Rhodes. Watts' essay "Our Race as Pioneers" indicates his support for imperialism
, which he believed to be a progressive force. There is also a casting of this work in London's Kensington Gardens
, overlooking the north-west side of the Serpentine.
, however, his reputation declined. Virginia Woolf
's comic play Freshwater portrays him in a satirical manner, an approach also adopted by Wilfred Blunt
, former curator of the Watts Gallery, in his irreverent 1975 biography England's Michelangelo. In his 1988 book on Ruskin
, the art critic Peter Fuller
emphasized Watts's spiritual and stylistic importance, also noting that late post-symbolist works such as The Sower of the Systems "stretched beyond the brink of abstraction". On the centenary of his death Veronica Franklin Gould published G.F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian, a positive study of his life and work.
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
(23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was a popular English Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope
Hope (painting)
Hope is a Symbolist oil painting by George Frederic Watts, two versions of which were completed in 1886. The painting was intended to form part of a series of allegorical paintings by Watts entitled the "House of Life".-Description:...
(see image) and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
Life
Watts was born in MaryleboneMarylebone
Marylebone is an affluent inner-city area of central London, located within the City of Westminster. It is sometimes written as St. Marylebone or Mary-le-bone....
, London on the birthday of George Frederic Handel (after whom he was named), to the second wife of a poor piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
-maker. Delicate in health and with his mother dying while he was still young, he was home-schooled by his father in a conservative interpretation of Christianity as well as via the classics such as the Iliad
Iliad
The Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
- the former put him off conventional religion for life, whilst the latter was a continual influence on his art. He showed artistic promise very early, learning sculpture from the age of 10 with William Behnes
William Behnes
William Behnes was an English sculptor of the early 19th century.Born in London, Behnes was the son of a Hanoverian pianoforte-maker and his English wife. His early life was spent in Dublin where he studied art at the Dublin Academy....
, starting to devotedly study the Elgin Marbles
Elgin Marbles
The Parthenon Marbles, forming a part of the collection known as the Elgin Marbles , are a collection of classical Greek marble sculptures , inscriptions and architectural members that originally were part of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens...
(later writing "It was from them alone that I learned") and then enrolling as a student at the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
at the age of 18. He also began his portraiture career, receiving patronage from his close contemporary Alexander Constantine Ionides
Alexander Constantine Ionides
Alexander Constantine Ionides was a British art patron and art collector and patron of Greek ancestry.-Life:...
, with whom he later came to be close friends. He came to the public eye with a drawing entitled Caractacus, which was entered for a competition to design murals for the new Houses of Parliament
Palace of Westminster
The Palace of Westminster, also known as the Houses of Parliament or Westminster Palace, is the meeting place of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom—the House of Lords and the House of Commons...
at Westminster
City of Westminster
The City of Westminster is a London borough occupying much of the central area of London, England, including most of the West End. It is located to the west of and adjoining the ancient City of London, directly to the east of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and its southern boundary...
in 1843. Watts won a first prize in the competition, which was intended to promote narrative paintings on patriotic subjects, appropriate to the nation's legislature. In the end Watts made little contribution to the Westminster decorations, but from it he conceived his vision of a building covered with murals representing the spiritual and social evolution of humanity.
The prize from the Westminster competition did, however, fund a long visit to Italy from 1843 onwards, where Watts stayed and became friends with the British ambassador Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland
Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland
Henry Edward Fox, 4th Baron Holland, of Holland, 4th Baron Holland, of Foxley, MP was briefly a British Whig politician and later an ambassador....
and his wife Mary Augusta at their homes in Casa Feroni and the Villa Careggi. Also whilst in Italy Watts began producing landscapes and was inspired by Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
's Sistine Chapel
Sistine Chapel
Sistine Chapel is the best-known chapel in the Apostolic Palace, the official residence of the Pope in Vatican City. It is famous for its architecture and its decoration that was frescoed throughout by Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino, Pinturicchio...
and Giotto
Giotto di Bondone
Giotto di Bondone , better known simply as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages...
's Scrovegni Chapel
Cappella degli Scrovegni
The Scrovegni Chapel, or Cappella degli Scrovegni, also known as the Arena Chapel, is a church in Padua, Veneto, Italy. It contains a fresco cycle by Giotto, completed about 1305, that is one of the most important masterpieces of Western art. The church was dedicated to Santa Maria della Carità at...
. In 1847, whilst still in Italy, Watts entered a new competition for the Houses of Parliament with his image Alfred
Alfred the Great
Alfred the Great was King of Wessex from 871 to 899.Alfred is noted for his defence of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of southern England against the Vikings, becoming the only English monarch still to be accorded the epithet "the Great". Alfred was the first King of the West Saxons to style himself...
Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes by Encountering them at Sea, on a patriotic subject but using Phidean inspiration. Leaving Florence in April 1847 for what was intended to be a brief return to London, he ended up staying. Back in Britain he was unable to obtain a building in which to carry out his plan of a grand fresco based on his Italian experiences, though he did produce a 45 ft by 40 ft fresco on the upper part of the east wall of the Great Hall of Lincoln's Inn
Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
entitled Justice, A Hemicycle of Lawgivers inspired by Raphael
Raphael
Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino , better known simply as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur...
's The School of Athens
The School of Athens
The School of Athens, or in Italian, is one of the most famous paintings by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1510 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the , in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican...
(completed 1859). In consequence most of his major works are conventional oil paintings, some of which were intended as studies for the House of Life.
In his studio he met Henry Thoby Prinsep (for 16 years a member of the Council of India
Council of India
The Council of India was the name given at different times to two separate bodies associated with British rule in India.The original Council of India was established by the Regulating Act of 1773 as a council of four formal advisors to the Governor-General at Fort William...
) and his wife Sara (née Pattle). Watts thus joined the Prinsep
Prinsep
Prinsep may mean any of several notable members of the British Prinsep family.The family descended from John Prinsep, an 18th-century merchant who was the son of Rev. John Prinsep, rector of Saundby, Nottinghamshire, and Bicester, Oxfordshire...
circle of bohemians, including Sara's seven sisters (including Virginia, with whom Watts fell in love but who married Charles, Viscount Eastnor
Charles Somers-Cocks, 3rd Earl Somers
Charles Somers Somers-Cocks, 3rd Earl Somers , styled the Hon. Charles Cocks from 1819 to 1841 and Viscount Eastnor from 1841 to 1852, was a British Conservative Party nad then Liberal politician....
in 1850, and Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....
). Previously staying at 48 Cambridge Street then in Mayfair, in 1850 he helped the Prinseps into a 21-year lease on Little Holland House
Little Holland House
Little Holland House was the dower house of Holland House in Kensington, England. Henry Thoby Prinsep, a director of East India Company and member of the Prinsep family, gained a 21-year lease on it from Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland thanks to the painter George Frederic Watts, a friend of both the...
and stayed there with them and their salon
Salon (gathering)
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation. These gatherings often consciously followed Horace's definition of the aims of poetry, "either to...
for the next 21 years. (The building was the dower house on the Hollands' London estate in Kensington
Kensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
, near the house of Lord Leighton.) One of only two pupils Watts ever accepted was Henry's son Valentine Cameron Prinsep
Valentine Cameron Prinsep
Valentine Cameron Prinsep, often known as Val Princep, was a British painter of the Pre-Raphaelite school.-Early life:...
(the other was Roddam Spencer-Stanhope - both remained friends but neither of the two became major artists). While living as tenant at Little Holland House, Watts's epic paintings were exhibited in Whitechapel
Whitechapel
Whitechapel is a built-up inner city district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is located east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Fashion Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and The Highway on the...
by his friend and social reformer Canon Samuel Barnett
Samuel Augustus Barnett
Samuel Augustus Barnett was an Anglican clergyman and social reformer particularly associated with the establishment of the first university settlement, Toynbee Hall in east London in 1884....
, and he finally received a commission for the Houses of Parliament, completing his The Triumph of the Red Cross Knight (from The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene
The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...
) in 1852-53. He also took a short trip back to Italy in 1853 (including Venice, where Titian became yet more of an inspiration) and with Charles Thomas Newton
Charles Thomas Newton
Sir Charles Thomas Newton was a British archaeologist. He was made KCB in 1887.Newton was born at Bredwardine in Herefordshire, and educated at Shrewsbury School and Christ Church, Oxford. He entered the British Museum in 1840 as an assistant in the Antiquities Department...
to excavate Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus
Halicarnassus was an ancient Greek city at the site of modern Bodrum in Turkey. It was located in southwest Caria on a picturesque, advantageous site on the Ceramic Gulf. The city was famous for the tomb of Mausolus, the origin of the word mausoleum, built between 353 BC and 350 BC, and...
in 1856-57, via Constantinople and the Greek islands.
In the 1860s, Watts' work shows the influence of Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
, often emphasising sensuous pleasure and rich color. Among these paintings is a portrait of his young wife, the actress Ellen Terry
Ellen Terry
Dame Ellen Terry, GBE was an English stage actress who became the leading Shakespearean actress in Britain. Among the members of her famous family is her great nephew, John Gielgud....
, who was 30 years his junior – having been introduced by mutual friend Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor
Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
, they married on 20 February 1864 just seven days short of her 17th birthday. When she eloped with another man after less than a year of marriage, Watts was obliged to divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...
her. Watts's association with Rossetti and the Aesthetic movement altered during the 1870s, as his work increasingly combined Classical
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
traditions with a deliberately agitated and troubled surface, in order to suggest the dynamic energies of life and evolution, as well as the tentative and transitory qualities of life. These works formed part of a revised version of the house of life, influenced by the ideas of Max Müller
Max Müller
Friedrich Max Müller , more regularly known as Max Müller, was a German philologist and Orientalist, one of the founders of the western academic field of Indian studies and the discipline of comparative religion...
, the founder of comparative religion
Comparative religion
Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...
. Watts hoped to trace the evolving "mythologies of the races [of the world]" in a grand synthesis of spiritual ideas with modern science, especially Darwinian evolution.
With the lease on Little Holland House nearing its end and the building soon to be demolished, in the early 1870s he commissioned a new London home nearby from CR Cockerell (New Little Holland House, backing onto the estate of Lord Leighton) and acquired a house at Freshwater
Freshwater, Isle of Wight
Freshwater is a large village and civil parish at the western end of the Isle of Wight, England. Freshwater Bay is a small cove on the south coast of the Island which also gives its name to the nearby part of Freshwater....
on the Isle of Wight
Isle of Wight
The Isle of Wight is a county and the largest island of England, located in the English Channel, on average about 2–4 miles off the south coast of the county of Hampshire, separated from the mainland by a strait called the Solent...
- his friends Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron
Julia Margaret Cameron was a British photographer. She became known for her portraits of celebrities of the time, and for photographs with Arthurian and other legendary themes....
and Lord Tennyson already had homes on the islands. To maintain his friendship with the Prinsep family as their children began leaving home, he built The Briary for them near Freshwater and adopted their relative Blanche Clogstoun. In 1877, his decree nisi
Decree nisi
A decree nisi is a court order that does not have any force until such time that a particular condition is met, such as a subsequent petition to the court or the passage of a specified period of time....
from Ellen Terry finally came through and the Grosvenor Gallery
Grosvenor Gallery
The Grosvenor Gallery was an art gallery in London founded in 1877 by Sir Coutts Lindsay and his wife Blanche. Its first directors were J. Comyns Carr and Charles Hallé...
was opened by his friend Coutts Lindsay
Coutts Lindsay
Sir Coutts Lindsay, 2nd Baronet , was a British artist and watercolourist.-Life:Lindsay was the eldest son of Lieutenant-General Sir James Lindsay, son of the Hon. Robert Lindsay, second son of James Lindsay, 5th Earl of Balcarres...
- this was to prove his ideal venue for the next ten years.
In 1886 at the age of 69 Watts re-married, to Mary Fraser-Tytler, a Scottish designer and potter, then aged 36. In 1891 he bought land near Compton, south of Guildford
Guildford
Guildford is the county town of Surrey. England, as well as the seat for the borough of Guildford and the administrative headquarters of the South East England region...
, in Surrey
Surrey
Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...
. The couple named the house "Limnerslease" (combining the words "limner" or artist with "leasen" or glean) and built the Watts Gallery
Watts Gallery
Watts Gallery is an art gallery in the village of Compton, near Guildford in Surrey. It is dedicated to the work of Victorian era painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts....
nearby, a museum dedicated to his work –- the first (and now the only) purpose-built gallery in Britain devoted to a single artist –- which opened in April 1904, shortly before his death. Watts's wife Mary had designed the nearby earlier Watts Mortuary Chapel
Watts Mortuary Chapel
The Watts Mortuary Chapel is a Gothic Revival chapel and mortuary located in the village of Compton in Surrey.As a follower of the Home Arts and Industries Association, set up by Earl Brownlow in 1885 to encourage handicrafts among the lower classes, when Compton Parish Council created a new...
, which Watts paid for and also painted a version of The All-Pervading
The All-Pervading
The All-Pervading is an allegorical painting produced between 1887 and 1890 by the English artist George Frederic Watts. Influenced by the Sibyls of the Sistine Chapel ceiling, it symbolises the spirit Watts saw as governing "the immeasurable expanse". He presented it to the Tate Gallery in 1899...
for the altar
Altar
An altar is any structure upon which offerings such as sacrifices are made for religious purposes. Altars are usually found at shrines, and they can be located in temples, churches and other places of worship...
only three months before he died.
Many of his paintings are held at the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
– he donated 18 of his symbolic paintings to the Tate in 1897, and three more in 1900. Refusing the baronetcy twice offered him by Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
, he was elected as an Academician to the Royal Academy in 1867 and accepted the Order of Merit
Order of Merit
The Order of Merit is a British dynastic order recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or for the promotion of culture...
in 1902, in his own words on behalf of all English artists.
Abstract art
Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...
. This painting depicts God as a barely visible shape in an energised pattern of stars and nebulae. Some of Watts' other late works also seem to anticipate the paintings of Picasso's Blue Period
Blue Period
The Blue Period is a term used to define to the works produced by Spanish painter Pablo Picasso between 1901 and 1904, when he painted essentially monochromatic paintings in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colors...
. He was also admired as a portrait painter. His portraits were of the most important men and women of the day, intended to form a "House of Fame". Many of these are now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery – 17 were donated in 1895, with more than 30 more added subsequently. In his portraits Watts sought to create a tension between disciplined stability and the power of action. He was also notable for emphasising the signs of strain and wear on his sitter's faces. Sitters included Charles Dilke, Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
and William Morris
William Morris
William Morris 24 March 18343 October 1896 was an English textile designer, artist, writer, and socialist associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and the English Arts and Crafts Movement...
.
During his last years Watts also turned to sculpture. His most famous work, the 1902 large bronze statue Physical Energy, depicts a naked man on horseback shielding his eyes from the sun as he looks ahead of him. It was originally intended to be dedicated to Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
, Attila
Attila the Hun
Attila , more frequently referred to as Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in 453. He was leader of the Hunnic Empire, which stretched from the Ural River to the Rhine River and from the Danube River to the Baltic Sea. During his reign he was one of the most feared...
, Tamerlane
Timur
Timur , historically known as Tamerlane in English , was a 14th-century conqueror of West, South and Central Asia, and the founder of the Timurid dynasty in Central Asia, and great-great-grandfather of Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty, which survived as the Mughal Empire in India until...
and Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan
Genghis Khan , born Temujin and occasionally known by his temple name Taizu , was the founder and Great Khan of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his death....
, thought by Watts to epitomise the raw energetic will to power. A cast was placed at Rhodes Memorial
Rhodes Memorial
Rhodes Memorial on Devil's Peak in Cape Town, South Africa, is a memorial to English-born South African politician Cecil John Rhodes designed by Sir Herbert Baker.-Location:...
in Cape Town
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
, South Africa, honouring the grandiose imperial vision of Cecil Rhodes. Watts' essay "Our Race as Pioneers" indicates his support for imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
, which he believed to be a progressive force. There is also a casting of this work in London's Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens
Kensington Gardens, once the private gardens of Kensington Palace, is one of the Royal Parks of London, lying immediately to the west of Hyde Park. It is shared between the City of Westminster and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The park covers an area of 111 hectares .The open spaces...
, overlooking the north-west side of the Serpentine.
Reception
Several reverent biographies of Watts were written shortly after his death. With the emergence of ModernismModernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
, however, his reputation declined. Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
's comic play Freshwater portrays him in a satirical manner, an approach also adopted by Wilfred Blunt
Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt
Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt was an art teacher, author, artist and curator of the Watts Gallery at Compton, Surrey. He taught art at Haileybury College and Eton College and helped to start a revolution in the hand-writing of British school-children, using the 15th c...
, former curator of the Watts Gallery, in his irreverent 1975 biography England's Michelangelo. In his 1988 book on Ruskin
Ruskin
- Surname :*John Ruskin , an English author, poet and artist, most famous for his work as art critic and social critic, and for his writing on the architecture of Venice....
, the art critic Peter Fuller
Peter Fuller
Peter Michael Fuller was a British art critic and magazine editor who was educated at Epsom College and Peterhouse, Cambridge....
emphasized Watts's spiritual and stylistic importance, also noting that late post-symbolist works such as The Sower of the Systems "stretched beyond the brink of abstraction". On the centenary of his death Veronica Franklin Gould published G.F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian, a positive study of his life and work.
Gallery
External links
- BBC Restoration Appeal for the Watts Gallery
- The Watts Gallery, Compton
- www.GeorgeFredericWatts.org 392 works by George Frederic Watts, with eight reproductions in colour.
- Watts - 5 works in focus at Tate Online
- G.F. Watts: Portraits, Fame & Beauty in Victorian Society, 2004–05 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery