Victorian worthies

by George Henry Blore

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.

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.