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.
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.
External circumstances also had little power to alter the even tenor of his way. Late in life, at the age of 69, he married Miss Fraser Tytler, a friend of some fifteen years' standing, who was herself an artist, and who shared all his tastes. After the marriage he and his wife spent a long winter in the East, sailing up the Nile in leisurely fashion, enjoying the monuments of ancient Egypt and the colours of the desert. It was a time of great happiness, and was followed by seventeen years of a serene old age, divided between his London house in Melbury Road and his new home in Surrey. Staying with friends in Surrey, Watts had made acquaintance with the beautiful country lying south of the Hog's Back; and in 1889 he chose a site at Compton, where he decided to build a house. To this he gave the name of Limnerslease. Thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Watts, who has built a gallery and hung some of his choicest pictures there, Compton has become one of the three shrines to which lovers of his work resort.[36]
But for many years he met with little recognition from the world at large. It was only at the age of 50 that he received official honours from the Royal Academy, though the success of his cartoons had marked him out among his contemporaries twenty-five years earlier. About 1865 his pictures won the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Charles Rickards, who continued to be the most constant of his patrons, and gave to his admiration the most practical form. Not only did he purchase from year to year such pictures as Watts was willing to sell, but twenty years later he organized an exhibition of Watts's work at Manchester, which did much to spread his fame in the North. In London Watts came to his own more fully when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened in 1877. Here the Directors were at pains to attract the best painters of the day and to hang their pictures in such a way that their artistic qualities had full effect. No one gained more from this than Watts and Burne-Jones; and to a select but growing circle of admirers the interest of the annual exhibitions began and ended with the work of these two kindred spirits. The Directors also arranged in 1881 for a special exhibition devoted to the works of Watts alone, when, thanks to the generosity of lenders, 200 of his pictures did justice to his sixty years of unwearied effort. This winter established his fame, and England now recognized him as one of her greatest sons. But when his friends tried to organize a dinner to be held at the Gallery in his honour, he got wind of the plot, and with his usual fastidious reserve begged to be spared such an ordeal. The élite of London society, men famous in politics, literature, and other departments of public life, were only too anxious to honour him; but he could not endure to be the centre of public attention. To him art was everything, the artist nothing. Throughout his life he attended few banquets, mounted fewer platforms, and only wished to be left to enjoy his work, his leisure, and the society of his intimate friends.
His interest in the progress of his age was profound, though it did not often take shape in visible form. He believed that the world might be better, and was not minded to acquiesce in the established order of things. He sympathized with the Salvation Army; he was a strong supporter of women's education; he was ardent for redressing the balance of riches and poverty, and for recognizing the heroism of those who, labouring under such grim disadvantages, yet played a heroic part in life. The latter he showed in practical form. In 1887 he had wished to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee by erecting a shrine in which to preserve the records of acts of self-sacrifice performed by the humblest members of the community. The scheme failed at the time to win support; but in 1899, largely through his help, a memorial building arose in the churchyard of St. Botolph, near Aldersgate, better known as the 'Postmen's Park'.