signed 'G.F. Watts' (lower left)
oil on board
13 x 9 3/8 in.
Dubbed 'England's Michelangelo', Watts claimed that he wanted to paint 'ideas, not things'. He was fêted by Victorian society for his lifelong quest to depict profound moral truths. He was obsessed with the story of the Fall in Genesis, and painted several different aspects of the theme, with differing titles, and to differing dimensions. The present picture is a sketch for the figures of Adam and Eve in a larger version of The Denunciation which depicts God and his angels appearing accusingly upper right. Similar compositions of the two crouching figures appear in the Cecil French Bequest, at the Watts Gallery, and in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard. The Watts Gallery picture dates from 1873, while the Fogg version was not completed until 1898. The full composition was conceived as a companion piece to The Creation of Eve, of which smaller versions also exist in the Watts Gallery and at the Fogg.
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