George Frederic Watts

George Frederic Watts 1817-1904, English painter and sculptor. He studied at the Royal Academy and in Italy, where he developed an enthusiasm for Renaissance painting and Greek sculpture that greatly influenced his work. He executed several decorative commissions, including his large fresco Justice (Lincoln's Inn, London), modeled after Raphael's School of Athens. Many of his allegorical pictures are in the Tate Gallery, London. The National Portrait Gallery, London, contains a large collection of his portraits of eminent contemporaries. The Metropolitan Museum has his Ariadne in Naxos. He was married to Ellen Terry and later to Mary Fraser-Tytler, who wrote a biography of him (3 vol., 1912). His home at Compton is now the Watts Gallery.

Bibliography: See also studies by C. T. Bateman (1901) and G. K. Chesterton (1904).

Watts, G. F. ( George Frederic Watts) (1817–1904). English painter and sculptor. In 1843 he won a prize in the competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament; no commission resulted from this, but he used the prize money to visit Italy, where the great Renaissance masters helped shape his high-minded attitudes towards art. After returning to England in 1847, he established a solid reputation in intellectual circles, but popular fame did not come until the early 1880s, following exhibitions of his work in Manchester (1880) and London (1881). In old age he was the most revered figure in British art, and in 1902 he was the only artist among the twelve original holders of the newly instituted Order of Merit. His style was early influenced by Etty, but the Elgin Marbles, Michelangelo, and the great Venetian painters (notably Titian) were his avowed exemplars in his desire ‘to affect the mind seriously by nobility of line and colour’. He aimed to invest his work with moral purpose and his most characteristic paintings are abstruse allegories that were once enormously popular but now seem vague and ponderous (Hope, 1886, Tate, London, and other versions). His portraits of great contemporaries (Gladstone, Tennyson, J. S. Mill, etc., NPG, London) have generally worn much better. As a sculptor, he is remembered chiefly for his equestrian piece Physical Energy (1904). A cast of it forms the central feature of the Cecil Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town, and another is in Kensington Gardens, London. Watts was twice married, his first wife being the celebrated actress Ellen Terry. Only 16 at the time of the wedding in 1864, she was 30 years his junior and they separated the following year. His former house at Compton, near Guildford, Surrey, is now the Watts Gallery, devoted to his work. Wilfrid Blunt was curator 1959–85.

Watts, G. F. ( George Frederic Watts) (b London, 23 Feb. 1817; d London, 1 July 1904). English painter and sculptor. In 1843 he won a prize in the competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament; no commission resulted from this, but he used the prize money to visit Italy, where the great Renaissance masters helped shape his high-minded attitudes towards art. After returning to England in 1847, he established a solid reputation in intellectual circles, but popular fame did not come until the early 1880s, following exhibitions of his work in Manchester (1880) and London (1881). In old age he was the most revered figure in British art, and in 1902 he was the only artist among the twelve original holders of the newly instituted Order of Merit (he had earlier refused many other honours, including a baronetcy, offered at the same time as Millais's).

Watts's style was early influenced by Etty, but the Elgin Marbles, Michelangelo, and the great Venetian painters (notably Titian) were his avowed exemplars in his desire ‘to affect the mind seriously by nobility of line and colour’. He aimed to invest his work with moral purpose and his most characteristic paintings are abstruse allegories that were once enormously popular but now seem vague and ponderous (Hope, 1886, Tate, London, and other versions). His portraits of great contemporaries (Gladstone, Tennyson, J. S. Mill, etc., NPG, London) have generally worn much better. As a sculptor, he is remembered chiefly for his equestrian piece Physical Energy (1904). A cast of it forms the central feature of the Cecil Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town, and another is in Kensington Gardens, London. Watts was twice married, his first wife being the celebrated actress Ellen Terry, of whom he painted several portraits, notably ‘Choosing’ (c.1864, NPG, London). Only 16 at the time of the wedding in 1864, she was 30 years his junior and they separated the following year (later she was the mother of Gordon Craig). Watts's former house at Compton, near Guildford, Surrey, is now the Watts Gallery, devoted to his work. Wilfrid Blunt was curator 1959–85.