George Frederick Watts
Biography of English 19th Century Portrait
Artist, Sculptor.
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George Frederick Watts
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George Frederick Watts (1817-1904)From 1847, Watts established a solid reputation for himself among intellectual circles, but did not achieve popular acclaim as an artist until the early 1880s, in the wake of exhibitions of his work in Manchester (1880), London (1881), and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (1884). But by his last years he was the most revered and famous artists in Britain. He was strongly influenced by Michelangelo and the great Venetian painters like Titian, and he infused his artworks with moral narrative - typically, complex allegorical messages, which though originally very popular now appear rather dated. His portraits of great contemporary figures - Cardinal Manning, the philosopher JS Mill, the poet Tennyson, and Prime Minister William Gladstone (all in the National Portrait Gallery, London) - have endured much better. As a sculptor, he is best rembered for his equestrian statue Physical Energy (1904). Since his death, his house near Guildford has been turned into the Watts Gallery and displays a wide variety of his works. In 1986, his oil painting Hope was sold for $1.1 million. |
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ENGLISH SCHOOL Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82) Romantic leader of Pre-Raphaelites John Everett Millais (1829-96) Academic portraitist William Morris (1834-96) Leader of Arts & Crafts Movement Aubrey Beardsley (1872-98) Art Nouveau illustrator English Figurative Painting 18th/19th century portraiture English Landscape Painting 18th and 19th century art |
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Early Life George Frederick Watts was an artist of gifts similar to those of his Victorian contemporary Alfred Stevens, but he had not the same singleness of artistic purpose and consequently his achievement, fine as it was, constitutes a less satisfactory whole. Like so many other English artists he learned drawing and fine art painting at the Royal Academy Schools, and this was followed by a period of work in the studio of the sculptor Behnes (1795-1864), which was probably of more importance in shaping his style, for it was there that he acquired his practical knowledge of sculpture. But it was from a close and loving study of the Elgin Marbles that he learned most, and the large and tranquil dignity of his best work certainly derives from them as well as the type of his ideal figures and his characteristic treatment of draperies. |
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In 1843, a prize won in the Westminster Hall competition of that year enabled him to visit Italy, where he remained for four years, painting and studying the Italian old masters, especially those of the Renaissance in Venice, whose influence combined with that of the Elgin Marbles to form the main characteristics of his mature style. Early Decorative Artworks He returned to England in 1847, and in the same year was successful a second time in winning a prize in the Westminster Hall competition for his cartoon 'Alfred inciting his Subjects to resist the Danes', which was subsequently carried out in the House of Lords. But his ambitions in the direction of mural painting met with little encouragement. An offer to decorate the hall of Euston Station, without payment, was refused, though an offer of the same kind to the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn was accepted, and he painted on the north wall of the hall a fresco of 'Justice, a Hemicycle of Lawgivers'. This fresco and the 'Alfred' in the House of Lords were almost the only murals of importance which Watts carried out, but nearly all his larger pictures, though painted on canvas, and not designed for a particular site, have the largeness and dignity of style associated with mural decoration. |
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Influences and Life Modern art movements had little effect on the development of Watts's style, and, though he came under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, and traces of Turner's inspiration are fairly obvious here and there in his work, he remained rather an isolated figure. After his boyhood he had no financial struggles, and he was able to devote himself laboriously to his art in a carefully sheltered seclusion. His reputation was firmly established before his rather belated election as an associate of the Royal Academy in 1863, which was followed by full membership four years later. Of the rest of his life there is little to tell. He remained to the end of it a fairly regular exhibitor at the Academy, as well as at the Grosvenor and New Galleries, and he exercised a considerable influence on many later 19th-century artists. By artists and public alike he was regarded with a reverence and awe which has rarely been accorded to any other English painter, and when the Order of Merit was conferred on him in 1902 it aptly expressed the general esteem in which he was held. He had already three times refused a title. Since his death, Watts's reputation has
suffered from the general reaction against all things Victorian, but it
seems likely that it will survive this phase of disparagement, even if
it never stands again quite so high as it did at the end of his life. Watts's work falls naturally into three categories, narrative painting (including allegories, historical and mythical subjects), portraits, and landscapes; and he himself would probably himself have ranked them in this order of importance, for he regarded himself above all as a teacher with a message to deliver. Such an attitude in an artist is now so unfamiliar as to be difficult to understand, but it was natural enough in an age when the minds of men were much occupied with moral problems and a picture was still expected to be a vehicle for thought. Allegories, Mythological, History Paintings To-day aesthetic purists may object to
the ethical meaning with which Watts loaded his pictures, and one may
feel that the weight of this load was sometimes more than the pictures
could support. But if we dismiss from our minds the modern prejudice against
pictures with a 'purpose', we must admit that Watts clothed his ideas
in large and dignified forms, which, impressive in themselves, are an
appropriate vehicle for their moral content. It is true that history
painting of this kind seem out of place on the walls of an exhibition,
and that it would have been far better if they could have been embodied
in some homogeneous scheme of decoration of a building, in which their
meaning would have been consonant with the purpose for which the building
was intended. Watts himself would certainly have preferred it so, and
it was no fault of his that his allegorical and mythological
painting consists of detached fragments from such a scheme. Their
really fine quality can be best appreciated by comparing them with those
of other painters of similar subjects. Allegories are notoriously difficult
to paint, and often seem no more than the flimsiest excuse for a picture,
but with Watts this was never the case, and in his best work subject and
form have an inevitable unity. 'Chaos' (Tate
Gallery), 'The Spirit of Christianity' (Tate Gallery), 'Love and Death'
(National Gallery London)
are fine examples of this side of his art. Watts's greatest qualities are evident
in his portrait art, and these
works are not open to the objections commonly brought against his allegories,
although they are treated with the same idealism and seriousness of purpose.
Few of his portraits were commissions. He painted them as historical records
of the great men of his time, and kept them in his own possession until
he presented them to the nation. He began in Italy as a young man after
making the acquaintance of Lord Holland, who befriended him and got him
distinguished sitters, thus enabling him to begin his series of historical
portraits early in his career. They are painted in a spirit of hero worship
which emphasizes the public greatness of his sitters rather than their
private aspect, but they have nothing about them of the official portrait.
They may perhaps best be described as symbolic portraits, for Watts sees
in the physical characteristics of his sitters nothing but symbols of
their greatness. The costume of his time did not give Watts the same opportunities for gorgeous colour schemes as Reynolds, but in spite of this limitation, the colour of his portraits has a sober and dignified richness which well befits their earnestness of purpose, and when the opportunity for strong colour presented itself he could make the most of it. Difficulties of costume, also, probably account for the fact that most of Watts's portraits are heads and shoulders, or small half-lengths in which the whole attention could be concentrated on the head. Portrait of Cardinal Manning The portrait of Cardinal Manning,
in which the costume allowed him to distribute the interest over his canvas,
is on a larger scale than most of his male portraits, and is a fine example
of what he could do with such an opportunity. It is, indeed, one of the
best portraits which he ever painted, and exhibits particularly well his
sympathetic idealism. Watts (one imagines) was not by nature particularly
in sympathy with the Roman Catholic Church nor with Manning himself, and
he might well have treated this picture as a costume piece with no more
than a decorative interest. Instead he makes a living symbol of that strange
mixture of splendour and asceticism, of worldly pomp and spiritual force,
which is the historic Catholic Church. For all the splendour of scarlet
and lace, the picture is dominated by the lean ascetic head of the Cardinal,
whose burning eyes bespeak an intensity of spiritual energy that the gorgeousness
of his robes cannot throw into shade. With many of his other sitters,
with Carlyle, with Tennyson, with William Morris, for example, Watts presumably
had a much more natural sympathy, yet splendid though their portraits
are, they do not surpass the portrait of Manning in their sympathetic
insight and symbolic idealism. It was characteristic of Watts that in
his portraits he completely suppresses himself, and leaves no trace of
any personal relationship between himself and his sitter. He seems to
re-create his subjects rather than to describe them, so that in looking
at the portraits we feel that we are brought into direct contact with
a powerful personality.
Landscapes In landscape
painting Watts does not reach so high a level as in his other work,
though even here he was on a higher level than many of his contemporaries
in England. He had not the close and intimate knowledge of nature necessary
for the great landscape-painter, and in consequence he saw too much with
the eyes of others. JMW Turner (1775-1851), John
Crome (1768-1821), and John Constable (1776-1837) at various times
seem to have been his models, but he lacks the direct approach of any
of these, and he appears to be trying to make his landscapes the vehicle
of ideas and moods not proper to them. |
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