THE FORGOTTEN WATTS by Joan K. Yanni

THE FORGOTTEN WATTS

by Joan K. Yanni

George Frederick Watts (1817-1904) was a giant in his time. Critic John Ruskin called him a genius, his Victorian public held him in awe. His allegorical paintings hung in their own gallery at the National Gallery of British Art (now the Tate) until the 1930s. Yet today he is almost unknown.

MAG owns two paintings by Watts:  The First Whisper of Love (68.61) and Youth in the Toils of Love (77.36), now on view in the late nineteenth-century Gallery. Both paintings are allegories; part of a series Watts began as The House of Life, a history of mankind, but which he never completed. In The First Whisper of Love, a mischievous Cupid whispers into the ear of a young man holding a spear, ready to go hunting. A few words from the God of Love, and the youth is sure to forget about the hunt and fall in love with a beautiful maiden.

The youth in the painting is close to the picture plane; his head, eyes half closed, seems to melt into the floral background. Watts's brushstrokes are heavy. He is known to have worked on his canvases intermittently over long periods of time, so that the exact dates of his paintings are hard to establish. Ours is dated 1860-62.

Watts was born in London to relative poverty.  His father was an unsuccessful piano manufacturer forced to become a piano tuner.  Watts studied informally for a short time in the studio of the sculptor William Behnes, where he drew from casts.  He developed a facility as a portrait draughtsman, and from the age of 16 supported himself. He entered the Royal Academy School in 1835, but attended few classes, saying that "the only teachers were the Elgin marbles."

Though largely untrained, Watts was industrious and determined, rising at dawn and spending all his daylight hours working. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1837 and thereafter continued to submit literary subjects, history paintings, and portraits for exhibition. He visited Italy from 1843 to 1847, studying fresco technique and painting large canvases depicting scenes from Romantic literature.

Whether he was in Italy or London, friends and patrons took care of Watts's needs. After his return to London in 1851, he moved in with Henry Thoby Primsep and his wife Sara as a permanent house guest in Little Holland House, Kensington. Sara was said to observe, "He came to stay three days; he stayed thirty years." (Actually, it was only 24!)  The social circle in Kensington included Tennyson, William Morris, several Pre-Raphaelites, and almost everyone of importance. With these contacts, Watts began to paint a series of noted individuals of the time. He painted about 300 portraits, including personalities from Garibaldi to William Morris and the poets Tennyson and Browning.

In 1865 Watts met the patron Charles Rickards who began to buy his non-narrative symbolic paintings. It wasn't until 1877, with the first Grosvenor Gallery exhibition, that this area of his work was revealed to a large, admiring audience. Stylistically these works (including the Eve and Cain series and Time, Death and Judgment) show his study of classical forms and love of vibrant color.

In the late 1860s Watts turned to sculpture. He was able to capture unusual freedom of movement as well as expression in marble. In 1870 he received a commission from Hugh Lupus Grosvenor for an equestrian statue of his ancestor Hugh Lupus. Its success inspired Watts to create the monumental statue, Physical Energy, which he worked on until the end of his life. Here the exaggerated strength and dynamism of both horse and naked rider express the energy Watts thought to be characteristic of his age. He also executed a colossal statue of Tennyson for the city of Lincoln in 1903.

Watts's growing stature and reputation were heightened by exhibitions in England, New York and on the Continent, and he presented paintings to museums in the USA, Canada and France. He donated a series of portraits to the National Portrait Gallery in 1895, where many are still on view, and 23 allegorical paintings to the National Gallery of British Art. Though he twice refused the title of baronet, he accepted the new Order of Merit in 1902.

At the age of 69 he married Mary Fraser Tytler and they eventually settled in Compton, Surrey. In 1903, the year before Watts died, Mrs. Watts guided construction of an art gallery on their property as a shrine to her husband's art. It still stands today. She also designed and decorated an Art Nouveau Mortuary Chapel dedicated to him. Watts died in 1904, having lived a long, industrious, and successful life.  His work is uneven, but at its best it qualifies him as one of the masters of British art.

The painting's oak frame, designed by Watts, is thinly gilded so that the grain of wood shows through. This type of frame gained popularity and came to be known as the "Watts" frame.

Source: Curatorial files, CWA Library.