Sidney Colvin

“ To give a fixed date to any work of Watts is apt to be misleading, since it was his habit to paint upon a single picture, or upon variations and replicas of a single design, through many successive years. The decade 1860–70 saw the inception of most, and the completion of some, of the works in painting and sculpture by which he remains best known to the world. Such were in painting ‘The Court of Death’; a series of three pictures on the story of Eve, and another of three on the story of Cain, each charged with a weight of brooding ethical and symbolic suggestion ”

“ In the modern world no such tradition exists, and Watts was compelled to embody, by technical methods of his own devising, not the consenting thoughts of whole generations, but only his own private thoughts, on human life and destiny. ”

“ He lived the life of a recluse so far as concerned outside society, and never broke his ascetic habits of early rising and day-long industry. But everything that was gifted, amiable, or admirable in the life of Victorian England seemed naturally drawn towards him, and came to seek him in the Kensington studio and garden. His chief time for receiving friends and visitors other than sitters (and these included practically all the distinguished men and beautiful women of his day) was on Sunday afternoons and evenings. ”

“ They vary greatly in power of vision and presentment, but hardly ever lack rhythmical flow and beauty, as well as originality, of composition, or richness of inventive and suggestive colour. The best of them, such as 'Love and Death,' 'Love and Life,' 'Love Triumphant,' 'The Spirit of Christianity,' and the Eve trilogy, seem never likely to be regarded as other than masterpieces of the painter's art. ”

“ At the Blackheath school Watts spent many of his evenings, studying music, French, Italian, and to some extent Greek, and acquiring from his new friend both a fresh zest for life and a wider range of reading. As a commission from him Watts drew and lithographed seven positions in the game of cricket, several of the figures being portraits of the famous cricketers of the day. These lithographs are now rare: five of the original drawings are preserved in the Marylebone cricket club. Life was however still a struggle to the young man. ”

“ The Victorian age was fortunate in having an artist of so fine a strain to interpret and record the beauty and graciousness of its best women and the breeding and intellect and distinction of its best men.
In person Watts was of middle height and rather slenderly made, the frame in later life somewhat bowed, but to the end suggesting the power of tenacious activity. ”

“ Nothing was more characteristic of the man than his quietly ascetic way of living in the midst of luxury and the unshaken industry which never let itself be seduced by social attention or flattery. He worked hard during these Florence years, always with high ambitions though always with a modest estimate of himself. ”

“ His conceptions were as a rule so sane, so simple, so broad and general in their significance, that the painted symbols in which they are expressed present no ambiguity and can be read without an effort, appealing happily and harmoniously to the visual emotions before making their further appeal to the moral emotions and human sympathies. ”

“ At Dorchester House Watts painted 'Life's Illusions' and 'Time and Oblivion,' the two of his allegorical designs with which to the end he remained least dissatisfied- John Ruskin, with whom Watts had made friends after his return from Italy, for a while had 'Time and Oblivion' in his house, but presently found in it not enough minute imitation of natural detail. ”

“ In 1902 the Order of Merit was instituted by King Edward VII. Watts was named one of the original twelve members, and accepted without demur the proffered honour, the only one he had so accepted in his life. In the same year he consented to a suggestion of Lord Grey that his equestrian statue of 'Physical Energy,' at which he had laboured for many years but which was not yet finished to his mind, should be cast in bronze for South Africa as a memorial to Rhodes's achievement as a pioneer of empire. Another cast has since the artist's death been placed in Lancaster Walk, Kensington Gardens. ”

“ For the north wall of the newly finished hall of Lincoln's Inn he offered to paint in fresco a great subject which which he called ‘Justice—a Hemicycle of Lawgivers.’ The offer was accepted. The work, which could only be done during law vacations, took him six years to finish, after many delays due to weak health and absences abroad. Paralysing attacks of nervous headache and prostration continued to be frequent. It may be doubted if the physical atmosphere of Little Holland House was good for him. ”

“ The whole family became his devoted and admiring friends; their features are commemorated in very many paintings and drawings by his hand. The Prinseps were looking for a new home, and Watts found them one in Little Holland House, Kensington, a rather romantic, rambling combination of two old houses in a spacious garden, and with much of a country aspect, in the south-west corner of Holland Park. In this home they invited Watts to join them, and he was domesticated there for the next five-and-twenty years; retaining also for the first year or two the studio in Charles Street. ”

“ The tenancy was thenceforth only from year to year, and Watts foresaw with dismay that he would have to change his home and place of work. He bought some acres in the Isle of Wight adjoining Tennyson's property of Farringford, with intent to build there a house that should be for the Prinseps a permanent and for himself an occasional home. To provide the means for this and also for his own accommodation in London he forced himself to the distasteful task of miscellaneous portrait-painting. ”

“ From this time also dates the devotion of a large part of the artist's time to works of sculpture. First came the mythological bust of Clytie struggling out of her flower-calyx; then an effigy of Mr. Thomas Owen for Condover church; then one of Bishop Lonsdale for Lichfield Cathedral; and later again a monument to Lord Lothian for Blickling. For his work as a sculptor Watts built himself a new studio in the Little Holland House garden. Finding that the Prinseps' lease of the place would expire in 1871, he tried unsuccessfully to secure a ten years' extension. ”

“ In 1886 he learned officially that his proposal ultimately to present to the nation both a series of symbolic pictures and a series of contemporary portraits would be warmly welcomed. But despite these evidences of recognition, and despite the general honour and affection which surrounded him, the loneliness of his home and the weakness of his health, together with his ever-present sense of the gulf between his ideals and his achievement, caused him frequent depression. ”

“ Helped by her wise tendance and devoted companionship, he lived on to a patriarchal age, through eighteen years more of fruitful industry, only interrupted by occasional illness and only darkened by the successive deaths of nearly all the friends of his early and middle life. The summers were spent regularly at the new Little Holland House ”

“ The Prinseps occupied The Briary in the spring of 1874, Watts remaining at the old Little Holland House till August 1875. In the meantime he had painted one of his best allegorical pictures, 'The Spirit of Christianity,' as well as an official portrait of the Prince of Wales. After spending most of the winter at Freshwater he achieved the trying labour of shifting the accumulations of his life's work from one house to the other, and got settled in Melbury road by February 1876. ”

“ The incurable illness under which Lord Lothian was suffering suggested the motive of the painter's ‘Love and Death,’ the most popular and perhaps the finest of his symbolic designs. Of this subject, as of so many others, Watts painted in the ensuing years several versions varying in scale and handling. New sitters, who soon became admiring friends and buyers, continued to come about him: among them Sir William Bowman the oculist in 1863, and Mr. ”