Victorian Worthies

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During the next three years his life was rather desultory. He was hoping
to return to Italy and did not find it easy to settle down in London. He
changed his studio two or three times. He planned various works, but
felt chilled at the absence of any clear encouragement from new patrons
or from the general public. His success in 1847 had not been followed
by any commissions for the sort of work he loved: interest in the
decoration of public buildings was still spasmodic and too rare.

He made the acquaintance of Mr. Ruskin; but, friendly though they were
in their personal relations, they did not see eye to eye in artistic
matters. Ruskin seemed to lay too much emphasis on points of secondary
importance, and to fail in judging the work of Michelangelo and the
greatest masters. So Watts thought, and many years later, in
conversation with Jowett, declared, chary though he was of criticizing
his friends. To-day there is little doubt whose judgement was the truer,
even had Ruskin not weakened his position by so often contradicting
himself. Besides Ruskin, Watts was beginning to make other friends, and
was a member of the Cosmopolitan Club, which counted among its members
Sir Robert Morier, Sir Henry Layard, FitzGerald, Palgrave, and Spedding.
The large painting of the 'Story from Boccaccio', which now hangs in the
Watts room of the Tate Gallery, hung for many years on the walls of this
club and was presented to the nation in 1902. How frequently Watts
attended the club or other social gatherings at this time we do not
know. His name figures little in the biographies and memoirs of
Londoners, and he himself would not have wished the record of his daily
life to be preserved. His modesty in all personal matters is
uncontested, and even if his subsequent offer of his pictures to the
nation smacks somewhat of presumption, his motive was something other
than conceit. His portraits were an historical record of the worthiest
men of his own time: his allegories were of value, so he felt, not for
their technical accomplishments, but for the high moral lessons which
they tried to convey. The artist himself was at ease only in retirement
and privacy. Yet complete isolation was not good for him. Ill-health
still dogged his steps, and the dejection which came over him in the
years 1849 and 1850 is to be seen in the gloomiest pictures which he
ever painted. Their titles and subjects alike recall the more tragic
poems of Thomas Hood. But the eclipse was not to last for long, and in
1850 Watts owed his recovery to a happy chance encounter with friends
who were to give him a new haven of refuge and gladden his life for
thirty years to come.

A high Indian official, James Pattle, had been the father of five
daughters who were famous for their beauty, and from their tastes and
character were particularly fitted to be the friends of artists and
poets. If Lady Somers was the most beautiful of the sisters and Mrs.
Cameron the most artistic, their elder sister Mrs. Prinsep proved to be
Watts's surest friend. Her husband, Thoby Prinsep, was a member of the
India Council in Whitehall, a large-hearted man, full of knowledge and
full of kindliness. Mrs. Prinsep herself was mistress of the domestic
arts in no common degree, from skilful cookery to the holding of a
literary _salon_. She and her husband realized what friendship could do
for a nature like that of Watts, and they provided him with an ideal
home, where he was nursed back to health, relieved of care, and cheered
by constant sympathy and affection. It was Watts who discovered this
home for them in a quiet corner of London, that has not yet lost all its
charm. Behind Holland House and adjoining its park was a smaller
property with a rambling old-fashioned house, built in the days when
London was still far away. At Little Holland House the Prinseps lived
for a quarter of a century. Here the sisters came and went freely with
their children who were growing up around them. Here were gatherings of
their friends, among whom Tennyson, Thackeray, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones
might be met from time to time; and here Watts remained a constant
inmate, giving regular hours to his work, enjoying their society in his
leisure, a special favourite with the children, who admitted him to
their confidence and called him by pet names. There was no lionizing, no
striving after brilliance; all work that was genuine and of high
intention received due honour, and Watts could hope here to carry to
fruition the noble visions which he had seen since the days of his
youth.

These visions had little to do with the exhibitions of Burlington House,
the winning of titles, or the acquisition of worldly wealth. Watts
cherished the old Greek conception of willing service to the community.
And he was alive to the special needs of an age when men were struggling
for gain, and when 'progress' was measured by material riches. To him,
if to few others, it seemed tragic that, in the wonderful development of
industrial Britain, art, which had spoken so eloquently to citizens of
Periclean Athens and to Florence in the Medicean age, should remain
without expression or sign of life. For a moment our Government had
seemed to hear the call, and the stimulus of the Westminster
competitions had been of value; but the interest died away all too
quickly, and the attention of the general public was never fully roused.
If the latter could be won, Watts was only too willing to give the time
and the knowledge which he had acquired. The building of the great
railway stations in London seemed to offer a chance, and Watts
approached the directors of the North Western Company with a humble
petition. All that he asked for was wall space and the payment of his
expenses in material. Had his request been granted, Euston might have
enjoyed pre-eminence among railway stations, and passengers for the
north might have passed through, or waited in, a National Gallery of
their own. But the Railway Director's mind is slow to move; inventions
leave him cold, and imagination is not to be weighed in the scale
against dividends and quick returns. The Company declined the offer on
the ground of expense, while their architect is said to have been
seriously alarmed at the idea of any one tampering with his building.

Another proposal met with a heartier response. The men of law proved
more generous than the men of commerce. The new Hall at Lincoln's Inn
was being built by Mr. Philip Hardwick, in the Tudor style. Benchers and
architect alike cordially welcomed Watts's offer to decorate a blank
wall with fresco. The work could only be carried on during the legal
vacations, and it proved a long business owing to the difficulties of
the process and to the interruptions caused by the artist's ill-health.
Watts planned it in 1852, began work in 1853, and did not put the
finishing touch till 1859. The subject was a group of famous lawgivers,
in which the chief figures were Moses, Mahomet, Justinian, Charlemagne,
and Alfred, and it stands to-day as the chief witness to his powers as a
designer on a grand scale.

Before this he had already dedicated to national service his gift of
portrait-painting. The head of Lord John Russell, painted in 1851, is
one of the earliest portraits known to have been painted with this
intention, though it is impossible to fix with accuracy the date when
such a scheme took shape. In 1899, with the same patriotic intention, he
was at work on a painting of Cecil Rhodes. In this half-century of
activity he might have made large sums of money, if he had responded to
the urgent demands of those men and women who were willing to pay high
prices for the privilege of sitting to him; but few of them attained
their object. His earlier achievements were limited to a few families
from whom he had received help and encouragement when he was unknown.
First among these to be remembered are the various generations of that
family whose name is still preserved at South Kensington in the Ionides
collection of pictures. Next came the Hollands, of whom he painted many
portraits at Florence; and a third circle, naturally enough, was that
of the Prinseps. In general he was most unwilling to undertake, as a
mere matter of business, commissions from individuals unknown to him. He
found portrait-painting most exhausting in its demands upon him. He
threw his whole soul into the work, straining to see and to reproduce
all that was most noble in his sitters. His nervous temperament made him
anxious at starting, while his high standard of excellence made him
often dissatisfied with what he had accomplished. Even when he was
painting Tennyson, a personal friend, he was miserable at the thought of
the responsibility which he had undertaken; and in 1879 he gave up a
commission to paint Gladstone, feeling that he was not realizing his
aim. So far as mere money was concerned, he would have preferred to
leave this branch of his profession, the most lucrative of all, perhaps
the most suited to his gifts, severely on one side, and to confine
himself to the allegorical subjects which he felt to be independent of
external claims.

In the years after 1850, when he was first living at Little Holland
House, Watts formed some of the friendships with brother artists which
added so much pleasure to his life. Foremost among these friends was
Frederic Leighton, the most famous President whom the Royal Academy has
known since the days of Reynolds, a man of many accomplishments,
linguist, orator, and organizer, as well as sculptor and painter, the
very variety of whose gifts have perhaps prevented him from obtaining
proper recognition for the things which he did really well. The worldly
success which he won brought him under the fire of criticism as no other
artist of the time; but, apart from his merits as a draughtsman and a
sculptor he was a man of singularly generous temper, a staunch friend
and a champion of good causes. These qualities, and his sincere
admiration for all noble work, endeared him to Watts; and, at one time,
Leighton paid daily visits to his studio to exchange views and to see
his friend's work in progress.

For a while Rossetti frequented the circle, but this wayward spirit
drifted into other paths, and the chief service which he did to Watts
was to introduce to him Edward Burne-Jones, most refined of artists and
most lovable of men. The latter's work commanded Watts's highest
admiration, and his friendship was valued to the end. To many lovers of
painting these two remain the embodiment of all that is purest and
loftiest in Victorian art; and though their treatment of classic
subjects and of allegory were so different their pictures were often
hung side by side in exhibitions and their names were coupled together
in the current talk of the time. Burne-Jones was markedly Celtic in his
love of beautiful pattern, in the ghostly refinement of his figures, in
the elaborate fancifulness of his imagery. Watts had more of the
full-blooded Englishman in his nature, and his art was simpler, grander,
more universal. If we may compare them with the great men of the
Renaissance, Burne-Jones recalled the grace of Botticelli, Watts the
richness and power of Veronese or of Titian.

Those who went to Little Holland House and saw the circle of the
Prinseps adorned by these artists, and by such writers as Tennyson,
Henry Taylor,[33] and Thackeray, had a singular impression of harmony
between the men and their surroundings; and if they had been asked who
best expressed the spirit of these gatherings, they would probably have
pointed to the 'Signor', as Watts came to be called among his intimate
friends--to the slight figure with the small delicately-shaped head, who
seemed to recall the atmosphere of Florence in the Middle Ages, when art
was at once a craft and a religion. But few who saw the grace and
old-fashioned courtesy with which he moved among young and old would
have guessed what fire and persistency were in him, that he would
outlive all his generation, and be still wielding a vigorous brush in
the early years of the century to come.

[Note 33: Sir Henry Taylor, author of _Philip van Artevelde_ and
other poems, and a high official of the Colonial Office.]

One interlude in this busy yet tranquil life came in 1856 when he was
asked to accompany Sir Charles Newton's party to the coast of Asia
Minor. Newton was to explore the ruins of Halicarnassus on behalf of the
British Government, and a man-of-war was placed at his disposal. The
opportunity of seeing Grecian lands in this leisurely fashion was too
good to be missed, and Watts spent eight happy months on board. He
showed his power of adapting himself to a new situation, made friends
with the sailors, and sang 'Tom Bowling' at their Christmas concert.
Incidentally he visited Constantinople, as it was necessary to get a
'firman' from the Porte, was commended to the famous ambassador Lord
Stratford de Redcliffe and painted two portraits of him, one of which is
in the National Portrait Gallery to-day. He also enjoyed a cruise
through the Greek Islands, where the scenery with its rich colour and
bold pure outlines was specially calculated to charm him. He painted few
landscapes in his long career, but both in Italy and in Greece it was
the distant views of mountain peaks that led him to give expression to
his delight in the beauty of Nature.

A different kind of distraction was obtained after his return by
occasional visits to Esher, where he was the guest of Mrs. Sanderson,
sister of Mr. Prinsep, and where he spent many a happy day riding to
hounds. For games he had no training, and little inclination, though he
loved in his old age to watch and encourage the village cricket in
Surrey; but riding gave him great pleasure. His love for the horse may
in part be due to this pastime, in part to his early study of the
Parthenon frieze with its famous procession of horsemen. Certainly this
animal plays a notable part in his work. Two great equestrian statues
occupied him for many years. 'Hugh Lupus', the ancestor of the
Grosvenors, was cast in bronze in 1884 and set up at Eaton Hall in the
Duke of Westminster's park. 'Physical Energy' was the name given to a
similar figure conceived on broader and more ideal lines. At this Watts
continued to work till the year of his death, though he parted with the
first version in response to Lord Grey's appeal when it was wanted to
adorn the monument to Cecil Rhodes. Its original destination was the
tomb in the Matoppo hills; but it was proved impracticable to convey
such a colossal work, without injury, over the rough country surrounding
them; and it was set up at Cape Town. The statue has become better known
to the English public since a second version has been set up in
Kensington Gardens. The rider, bestriding a powerful horse, has flung
himself back and is gazing eagerly into the distance, shading with
uplifted hand his eyes against the fierce sunlight which dazzles them.
The allegory is not hard to interpret, though the tame landscape of a
London park frames it less fitly than a wide stretch of wild and
solitary veld.

Horses of many different kinds figure in his pictures. In one, whose
subject is taken from the Apocalypse, we see the war-horse, his neck
'clothed with thunder'; in another his head is bowed, the lines
harmonizing with the mood of his master, Sir Galahad. 'The Midday Rest',
unheroic in theme but grand in treatment, shows us two massive dray
horses, which were lent to him as models by Messrs. Barclay and Perkins,
while 'A patient life of unrewarded toil' renders sympathetically the
weakness of the veteran discharged after years of service, waiting
patiently for the end. One instance of a more imaginative kind shows us
'Neptune's Horses' as the painter dimly discerned them, with arched
necks and flowing manes, rising and leaping in the crest of the wave.

His portraits of great men generally took the form of half-lengths with
the simplest backgrounds. His subjects were of all kinds--Tennyson and
Browning, Rossetti and Burne-Jones, Gladstone, Mill, Motley, Joachim,
Thiers, and Anthony Panizzi.[34] His object was a national one, and the
foreigners admitted to the company were usually closely connected with
England. Sometimes the pose of the body and the hands helps the
conception, as in Lord Lytton and Cardinal Manning; more often Watts
trusts to the simple mass of the head or to the character revealed by
the features in repose. No finer examples for contrast can be given than
the portraits of the two friends, Burne-Jones and William Morris,
painted in 1870. In the former we see the spirit of the dreamer, in the
latter the splendid vitality and force of the craftsman, who was
impetuous in action as he was rich in invention. The room at the
National Portrait Gallery where this collection is hung speaks
eloquently to us of the Victorian Age and the varied genius of its
greatest men; and in some cases we have the additional interest of being
able to compare portraits of the same men painted by Watts and by other
artists. Well known is the contrast in the case of Carlyle. Millais has
painted a picturesque old man whose talk might be racy and his temper
uncertain; but the soul of the seer, tormented by conflicts and yet
clinging to an inner faith, is revealed only by the hands of Watts.
Again Millais gives us the noble features, the extravagant 'hure'[35] of
the Tennyson whom his contemporaries saw, alive, glowing with force;
Watts has exalted this conception to a higher level and has portrayed
the thinker whom the world will honour many centuries hence. Some will
perhaps prefer the more objective treatment; and it is certain that
Watts's ambition led him into difficult paths. Striving to represent the
soul of his sitter, he was conscious at times that he failed--that he
could not see or realize what he was searching for. More than once he
abandoned a commission when he felt this uncertainty in himself. But
when the accord between artist and sitter was perfect, he achieved a
triumph of idealization, combined with a firm grasp on reality, such as
few artists since Giorgione and the young Titian have been able to
achieve.

[Note 34: Sir Anthony Panizzi, an Italian political refugee, the
most famous of librarians. He served the British Museum from 1831 to
1866.]

[Note 35: '"Hure: tete herissee et en desordre"; se dit d'un homme
qui a les cheveux mal peignes, d'un animal, &c.'--Littre.]

Apart from portraits there was a rich variety in the subjects which the
painter handled, some drawn from Bible stories, some from Greek legends
or mediaeval tales, some for which we can find no source save in his own
imagination. He dealt with the myths in a way natural to a man who owed
more to Greek art and to his own musings than to the close study of
Greek literature. His pictures of the infancy of Jupiter, of the
deserted Ariadne, of the tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice, have no
elaborate realism in detail. The Royal Academy walls showed, in those
days, plenty of marble halls, theatres, temples, and classic groves,
reproduced with soulless pedantry. Watts gave us heroic figures, with
strong masses and flowing lines, simply grouped and charged with
emotion--the yearning love of Diana for Endymion, the patient
resignation of Ariadne, the passionate regret of Orpheus, the cruel
bestiality of the Minotaur. Some will find a deeper interest, a grander
style, in the designs which he made for the story of our first parents
in the Book of Genesis. Remorse has rarely been expressed so powerfully
as in the averted figure of Eve after the Fall, or of Cain bowed under
the curse, shut out from contact with all creation. In one of his
masterpieces Watts drew his motive from the Gospel story. The picture
entitled 'For he had great possessions' shows us the young ruler who has
come to Christ and has failed in the supreme moment. His back, his bowed
neck and averted head, with the gesture of indecision in his right hand,
tell their tale with consummate eloquence.

In his more famous allegories the same is true; by simple means an
impression of great power is conveyed. The popularity of 'Love and
Death' and its companion picture shows how little the allegory needs
explanation. These themes were first handled between 1860 and 1870; but
the pictures roused such widespread admiration that the painter made
several replicas of them. Versions are now to be found in the Dominions
and in New York, as well as in London and Manchester. Photographs have
extended their renown and they are so familiar to-day that there is no
need to describe them. Another masterpiece dealing with the subject of
Death is the 'Sic transit', where the shrouded figure of the dead
warrior is impressive in its solemnity and stillness. 'Dawn' and 'Hope'
show what different notes Watts could strike in his treatment of the
female form. At the other extreme is 'Mammon', the sordid power which
preys on life and crushes his victims with the weight of his relentless
hand. The power of conscience is shown in a more mystic figure called
'The Dweller in the Innermost'. Judgement figures in more than one
notable design, the most familiar being that which now hangs in St.
Paul's Cathedral with the title of 'Time, Death, and Judgement'. Its
position there shows how little we can draw the line between the
different classes of subjects as they were handled by Watts. A courtier
like Rubens could, after painting with gusto a rout of Satyrs, put on a
cloak of decorum to suit the pageantry of a court, or even simulate
fervour to portray the ecstasy of a saint. He is clearly acting a part,
but in Watts the character of the man is always seen. Whether his
subjects are drawn from the Bible or from pagan myths, they are all
treated in the same temper of reverence and purity.

It is impossible to avoid the question of didactic art in writing of
these pictures, though such a wide question, debated for half a century,
can receive no adequate treatment here. We must frankly allow that Watts
was 'preaching sermons in paint', nor would he have repudiated the
charge, however loud to-day are the protests of those who preach the
doctrine of 'art for art's sake'. But the latter, while stating many
principles of which the British public need to be reminded, seem to go
beyond their rights. It is, of course, permissible for students of art
to object to technical points of handling--Watts himself was among the
first to deplore his own failures due to want of executive ability; it
is open to them to debate the part which morality may have in art, and
to express their preference for those artists who handle all subjects
impartially and conceive all to be worthy of treatment, if truth of
drawing or lighting be achieved. But when they make Watts's ethical
intention the reason for depreciating him as an artist they are on more
uncertain ground. There is no final authority in these questions. Ruskin
was too dogmatic in the middle years of his life and only provoked a
more violent reaction. Twenty years later the admirers of Whistler and
Manet were equally intolerant, and assumed doctrines which may hold the
field to-day but are certain to be questioned to-morrow.

Watts was most reluctant to enter into controversy and had no ambition
to found a school; in fact so far was he from imposing his views on
others, that he scarcely ever took pupils, and was content to urge young
artists to follow their own line and to be sincere. But he could at
times be drawn into putting some of his views on paper, and in 1893 he
wrote down a statement of the relative importance which he attached to
the qualities which make a painter. Among these Imagination stands
first, Intellectual idea next to it. After this follow Dignity of form,
Harmony of lines, and Colour. Finally, in the sixth place comes Realism,
the idol of so many of the end of the century, both in literature and
art.

Some years earlier, in meeting criticism, Watts had said, 'I admit my
want of dexterity with the brush, in some cases a very serious defect,'
but at the same time he refused to accept the authority of those 'who
deny that art should have any intellectual intention'. In general, he
pleaded that art has a very wide range over subject and treatment; but
he did not set himself up as a reformer in art, nor inflict dogmas on
the public gratuitously. He found that some of his more abstract themes
needed handling in shadowy and suggestive fashion: if this gave the
impression of fumbling, or displayed some weakness in technique, even so
perhaps the conception reaches us in a way that could not be attained by
dexterity of brushwork. As he himself said, 'there were things that
could only be done in art at the sacrifice of some other things'; but
the points which Watts was ready to sacrifice are what the realists
conceive to be indispensable, and his aims were not as theirs. But his
life was very little troubled by controversy; and he would not have
wished his own work to be a subject for it.

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