How many and varied the styles, how many and varied the subjects, that in turn have found expression and thus sprung into life on the easel of this great painter.
It happened that on June 1st, 1886 (the anniversary of my birthday), a friend took me to the studio of Mr. Watts to see him at work, a note of which incident lies before me in a big, round, girlish hand.
To begin with, the charming house in Melbury Road, Kensington, with its large studio and spacious picture-gallery, seemed exactly the right home for a great artist.
At this time the master was working on what appeared, to my young mind, a ghastly subject—“Vindictive Revenge,” depicting a vulture of human form tearing to pieces a victim, whether man or woman escapes my memory. Horrible, and in no way satisfying to my reason. On another easel was a huge sulphur-coloured canvas showing a dying man sitting in his chair with a majestic woman’s figure standing by his side. Lying on a table near was a sketch (later exhibited in the Grosvenor Gallery) of a most quaint and antiquated musical instrument that was used in the larger picture. This instrument resembled a wooden bowl, its aperture covered with a stretched skin, on which the shaggy hair was left, and the strings were passed over a few holes in this skin.
What it was called or whence its origin history does not relate. It had probably been picked up as a curio for its quaint appearance, but Mr. Watts disclaimed being a collector of such, telling me that his house would have been long overfilled had he given rein to this hobby, unique in the way it carries one on and on.
In the gallery in Melbury Road hung all manner of pictures and numerous portraits, amongst which I recognised those of Tennyson, the Prince of Wales, his former wife Ellen Terry, and Violet Lindsay—one of his favourite models—besides many more; but almost seventy were then being exhibited at Manchester, which somewhat denuded the walls.
In personal appearance Watts was a gracious, kindly old gentleman, with white hair and a closely trimmed beard. He wore a tight tweed suit and a scarlet ribbon loosely tied round his neck, besides a black velvet skull-cap, head-gear of so many “old masters.”
Here it seems permissible to quote a message from that great artist, when he was ill, delivered by Alfred Gilbert at an Art Congress.
He urged “the importance of making the aims and principles of art generally understood. The stumbling-block to the English was the practical: all that did not present the idea of immediate advantage seemed to them impractical. Till the love of beauty was once more alive among us there could be little hope for art.... The art that existed only in pictures and statues was like a religion kept only for Sundays.”