george frederick watts
From a painting by himself in the National Portrait Gallery
In the reign of Queen Victoria many thousands of trivial anecdotic pictures were bought and sold, were reproduced in Art Annuals and Christmas Numbers and won the favour of rich amateurs and provincial aldermen—so much so that Victorian art has been a favourite target for the shafts of critics formed in the school of Whistler and the later Impressionists. But however just some of their strictures may be, it is foolish to condemn an age wholesale or to shut our eyes to the great achievements of those artists who, rising above the general level, dignified the calling of the painter just when the painters were most rare. These men formed no single movement progressing in a uniform direction. The study of pure landscape is best seen in the water-colour draughtsmen, Cotman, Cox, and de Wint; of landscape as a setting for the life of the people, in Fred Walker and George Mason. Among figure-painters the 'Pre-Raphaelites', Rossetti, Holman Hunt, and Millais, with their forerunner Madox Brown, are the first to win attention by their earnestness, their romantic imagination, and their intense feeling for beauty: in these qualities Burne-Jones carried on their work and retained the allegiance of a cultured few to the very end of the century. Two solitary figures are more difficult to class, Alfred Stevens and Watts. Each learnt fruitful lessons from prolonged study of the great art of the past; yet each preserves a marked originality in his work. More than any other artists of their age they realized the unity of art and the dependence of one branch upon another. Painting should go hand in hand with sculpture, and both minister to architecture. So the world might hope once more to see public buildings nobly planned and no less nobly decorated, as in the past it saw the completion of the Parthenon and the churches of mediaeval Italy. It was unfortunate that they received so little encouragement from the public, and that their example had so narrow an influence. St. Paul's can show its Wellington monument, Lincoln's Inn its fresco; but year after year subject-pictures continued to be painted on an ambitious scale, which after a few months' exhibition on the walls of Burlington House passed to their tomb in provincial museums, or reappeared as ghosts in the sale-room only to fetch a derisory price and to illustrate the fickle vagaries in the public taste.
In the early life of George Frederick Watts, who was born in a quiet street in West Marylebone, there are few incidents to narrate, there is little brightness to enliven the tale. His father, a maker of musical instruments, was poor; his mother died early; his home-life was overshadowed by his own ill-health and the uncertain moods of other members of the family. His education was casual and consisted mostly of reading books under the guidance of his father, who had little solid learning, but refined tastes and an inventive disposition. In his Sundays at home, where the Sabbatarian rule limited his reading, he became familiar with the stories of the Old Testament; he discovered for himself the Waverley Novels and Pope's translation of the Iliad; and he began from early years to use his pencil with the eager and persistent enthusiasm which marks the artist born.
For a rich artistic nature it was a starved life, but he made the most of such chances as came in his way. He was barely ten years old when he found his way to the studio of a sculptor named William Behnes, a man of Hanoverian extraction, an indifferent sculptor but possessed of a real talent for drawing; and from his more intellectual brother, Charles Behnes, he learnt to widen his interest in literature. In this halting and irregular process of education he received help, some years later, from another friend of foreign birth, Nicholas Wanostrocht, a Belgian, who under the assumed name of 'Felix' became a leading authority on the game of cricket. Wanostrocht was a cultivated man of very wide tastes, and it was largely through his encouragement that Watts gave to the study of the French and Italian languages, and to music, what little time he could spare from his professional work. London was to render him greater services than this. Thanks to his visits to the British Museum, he had, while still in his teens, come under a mightier spell. Though few Englishmen had yet learnt to value their treasures, the Elgin Marbles had been resting there for twenty years. But now, two years before Queen Victoria's accession, there might be seen, standing rapt in admiration before the works of Phidias, a boy of slender figure with high forehead, delicately moulded features, and disordered hair, one who, as we can see from the earliest portrait which Mrs. Watts has preserved in her biography, had something of the unearthly beauty of the young Shelley. He was physically frail, marked off from ordinary men by a grace that won its way quickly to the hearts of all who were susceptible to spiritual charm. Untaught though he was, he had the eye to see for himself the grandeur of these relics of Greece, and throughout his life they remained one of the guiding influences in his development, one of the standards which he set up before himself, though all too conscious that he could not hope to reach that height. We see their influence in his treatment of drapery, of horses, of the human figure, in his idealization of types, in the flowing lines of his compositions, and in the grouping of his masses. Compared to the hours which he spent in the British Museum, the lessons in the Royal Academy schools seem unimportant. He attended classes there for some months in 1835, but the teaching was poor and its results disappointing. William Hilton, R.A., who then occupied the post of Keeper, gave him some kind words of encouragement, but in general he came and went unnoticed, and he soon returned to his solitary self-training in his own studio. If we know little of his teaching in art, we know still less of his personal life during the time when he was laying the foundations of his success by study and self-discipline. Early rising was an art which he acquired early, and maintained throughout life; long after he felt the spur of necessity, even after the age of 80, he could rise at four when there was work to be done; and, living as he did on the simplest diet, he often achieved his best results at an hour when other men were still finishing their slumbers. His shyness and sensitiveness, combined with precarious health and weak physique, would seem to equip him but poorly in the struggle for life; but his steady persistence, his high conception of duty, his faith in his art, joined to that power which he had of winning friends among the noblest men and women of his day, were to carry him triumphantly through to the end.
The career of Watts as a public man began in 1843 when he had reached the age of 26. The British Government, not often guilty of fostering art or literature, may claim at least the credit for having drawn him out of his seclusion at the very moment when his genius was ripening to bear fruit. In 1834 the Palace of Westminster, so long the home of the Houses of Parliament, had been burnt to the ground. The present buildings were begun by Sir Charles Barry in 1840, and, with a view to decorating them with wall-paintings, the Board of Works wisely offered prizes for cartoons, hoping thereby to attract the best talent of the country. In June 1843 they had to judge between 140 designs by various competitors, and to award prizes varying in value from £300 to £100. Of the three first prizes one fell to Watts, hitherto unknown beyond the narrow circle of his friends, for a design displaying 'Caractacus led in triumph through the streets of Rome'. This cartoon, however, was not employed for its original purpose: it fell into the hands of an enterprising, if inartistic, dealer, who cut it up and sold such fragments as he judged to be of value in the state of the picture market at the time. What was far more important was the encouragement given to the artist by such a success at a critical time of his life, and the opportunity which the money furnished him to travel abroad and enrich his experiences before his style was formed. He had long wished to visit Italy; and, after spending a few weeks in France, he made his leisurely way (at a pace incredible to us to-day) to Florence and its picture galleries. On the steamer between Marseilles and Leghorn he was fortunate in making friends with a Colonel Ellice and his wife, and a few weeks later they introduced him to Lord Holland, the British Minister at Florence.
The story goes that Watts went to be the guest of Lord and Lady Holland for four days and remained there for four years—a story which is a tribute to the discernment of the latter and not a satire upon Watts, who was the last man in the world to take advantage of hospitality or to thrust himself into other people's houses. No doubt it is not to be taken too literally, but at least it is so far true that he very quickly became intimate with his host and hostess and found a home where he could pursue his art under ideal conditions. The value and the danger of patronage have been often discussed. Democracy may provide a discipline for artists and men of letters which is often salutary in testing the sincerity of their devotion to art and literature; but, in such a stern school, men of genius may easily founder and miss their way.
However that may be, Watts found just the haven which was needed for a nature like his. So far he had known but little appreciation, and had lived with few who were his peers. Now he was cheered by the favour of men and women who had known the best and whose favour was well worth the winning. But he kept his independence of spirit. He lived in a palace, but his diet was as sparing as that of a hermit. He feasted his eyes on the great works of the Renaissance, but he preserved his originality, and continued to work, with fervour and enhanced enthusiasm, on the lines which he had already marked out for himself. He did not copy with the hand, but he drank in new lessons with the eyes and dreamed new dreams with the spirit.
The Hollands had two houses, one in the centre of the city, the other, the Villa Medicea di Careggi, lying on the edge of the hills some two or three miles to the north. This latter had been a favourite residence of the first Cosimo; here Lorenzo had died, turning his face to the wall, unshriven by Savonarola; and here Watts decorated an open loggia in fresco, to bear witness to its latest connexion with the patronage of Art. Between the two houses he passed laborious but tranquil days, studying, planning, training his hand to mastery, but enjoying in his leisure all that such a home could give him of varied entertainment. Music and dancing, literature and good company, all had their charms for him, though none of them could beguile him into neglecting his work. Fortune had tried him with her frowns and with her smiles; under temptations of both sorts he remained but more faithful to his calling.
His health gave cause for anxiety from time to time, but he delighted in the sunshine and the genial climate of the South, and in general he was well enough to enjoy what Florence could give him of beautiful form and colour, and even to travel farther afield. One year he pushed as far as Naples, stopping on the way for a hurried glance at Rome. On this memorable day the Sistine chapel and its paintings were kept to the last; and Watts, high though his expectations were, was overwhelmed at what he saw. 'Michelangelo', he said, 'stands for Italy, as Shakespeare does for England.' So the four years went by till in 1847 this halcyon period came to an end. The Royal Commission of Fine Arts was offering prizes for fresco-painting, and Watts felt that he must put his growing powers to the test and utilize what he had learnt. This time he chose for his subject 'Alfred inciting the English to resist the Danes by sea'. He was busy at work in the early months of 1847 making many sketches in pencil for the figures, and by April he was on his way home, bringing with him the 'Alfred' almost finished and five other canvases in various stages of completion. The picture was placed in Westminster Hall for competition in June, and soon after he was announced to be the winner of one of the three £500 prizes. When the Commissioners decided to purchase his picture for the nation, he refused to take more than £200 for it, though he might easily have obtained a far higher price. This is one of the earliest instances in which he displayed that signal generosity which marked his whole career.
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.