George Frederic Watts

George Frederic Watts

by and published by Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, after Frank Dudman, for Joseph Parkin Mayall
photogravure, circa 1883; published 1884

George Frederic Watts by Julia Margaret Cameron

1865 - 9

George Frederic Watts by Julia Margaret Cameron 1864

The marriage of Ellen Terry and G F Watts

The marriage of Ellen Terry and G F Watts was not a success but what I hadn't heard before was Watts’ surrounded his “child-wife” with a little court of his middle aged female friends, who subjected Terry to humiliating surveillance and made sure she did not to open her mouth in front of Watts’ distinguished guests. 

After ten months of marriage, she ran away with a progressive architect, Edward Godwin. She left a note containing only two words, “Found Drowned”, attached to a photograph of Watts. The reference is to a painting by Watts, which, as Terry said, depicted “the wreck of a young girl’s life”.

G F Watts - Portrait Study of a Girl with Red Hair, George Frederick Watts. English, (1817-1904)

Moving 'Physical Energy' and 'Tennyson' by G F Watts

Postman's Park: G. F. Watts's Memorial - Interview radio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eoUeQZL1lSg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postman's_Park

A return to the limelight for England’s Michelangelo

The Watts Gallery has just been superbly restored and refurbished during a two-and-a-half year closure.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/8474123/A-return-to-the-limelight-for-Englands-Michelangelo.html

Jeremy Hunt Visits Watts Gallery Following Restoration

http://www.artdaily.org/index.asp?int_sec=2&int_new=47445

G F Watts - Physical Energy, Kensington

Watts Chapel

It is no exaggeration to say that the Watts Cemetery Chapel is one of the most beautiful, one of the most extraordinary, original, marvellous and magical buildings in the whole of the British Isles!’- Lucinda Lambton

http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk/visitor-information/watts-chapel

G F Watts - magazine and books

http://www.ekmpowershop5.com/ekmps/shops/wattsgallery/books-1-c.asp

http://www.ekmpowershop5.com/ekmps/shops/wattsgallery/watts-magazine-14-c.asp

England's Michelangelo: George Frederic Watts, Watts Gallery. Tate Britain, 2004

[Lily Langtry]

Andrew Graham-Dixon

http://www.andrewgrahamdixon.com/archive/readArticle/394

G F Watts - Portrait, possibly Wilfred Scawen Blunt

Hammer Price with Buyer's Premium: 9,625 GBP

66 by 53cm., 26 by 21in.

oil on canvas

This sitter bears a resemblance to the handsome, aristocratic and raffish poet Wilfred Scawen Blunt (1840-1922). The 14-year-old Blunt was tutored in painting by Watts, who rarely took pupils. A portrait of Blunt painted by Watts in 1899 for one of his former mistresses Madeline Wyndham is known from a photograph by Frederic Hollyer. This portrait depicts Blunt with greying hair and beard and if the present lot does indeed depict Blunt it dates from an earlier decade when his looks were their most beguiling to the beautiful women that risked their reputation to be with him. The style is consistent with Watts' portraits of Millais, Morris, Rossetti, Leighton and Burne-Jones painted in the 1870s when Blunt was in his 30s.

G F Watts - Laura Caroline Russell

painted in the 1860's

featured on the Antiques Roadshow

most unusual to show an open mouth (she was having a singing lesson)

she later married the 6th Earl of Wilton

mentions in the programme that when Watts painted the skin of old men he pressed string into the paint to get the right effect

estimate £15 - 20,000

with some minor restoration £20 - £30,000

G F Watts - The Good Samaritan

Price Realized £3,000

signed 'G.F. Watts' (lower left), signed and inscribed 'Study for a picture of/Ganymede/G.F. Watts/Little Holland House' (on a label on the reverse)
oil on canvas
18¾ x 22½ in. (47.8 x 57.2 cm.)

Engraved
Cardiff, 1913, no.15.

The picture was discussed by F.G. Stephens in the Athenaeum when it was exhibited at Agnew's in the summer of 1899. 'At Messrs. Agnew and Sons' gallery may be seen a small but poetical painting called 'The Good Samaritan', by Mr Watts, the charm of which is greatly due to the extreme simplicity of the composition, and, above all, to the effect of ruddy twilight after a lurid sunset. In fact, the approach of night is portrayed impressively. The victim has been stripped and thrown down helpless at the side of the road before the rescuer came up, descended from his mule, and, approaching, applied one hand to the man's side in order to test whether life remained there. The style of the picture is characteristically simple and large. The colouration, including the dark red and blue draperies, the flesh tints of the naked man, the obscurity of the landscape, and the glare of the sky, is exactly right. As there is much that is noble in the picture, it matters little that the head of the Samaritan is too small.'

Watts had treated the subject in a picture exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850 (Manchester City Art Gallery), but on a much larger scale and in a completely different composition. The labels on the back suggest that the frame was originally on the oil study of Ganymede (1864) which is still in the Watts Gallery at Compton. The label for the Watts exhibition at the New Gallery in 1896-7 certainly refers to this picture and not to ours.

G F Watts - Portrait of a Lady, possibly Mrs Crawshay

Indistinctly inscribed with the sitter’s name and the artist’s address on a fragmented label
attached to the frame
Oil on canvas, 26 × 21 in, in the original Watts frame

Provenance: Lilian Mackintosh (the artist’s adoptive daughter) and thence by descent

This portrait is believed to be of the artist’s housekeeper Mrs Crawshay. Lilian
Mackintosh inherited the work from Watts. Lilian was educated at Roedean School
near Brighton and was permitted as a special favour to Watts to wear long flowing
Pre-Raphaelite dresses rather than the regular uniform. She was part of the Watt’s
household until the artist’s death in 1904. After the death of her husband Michael
Chapman, Lilian returned with her children to the Watts family home in Compton
where they remained until the 1930s.

G F Watts - Portrait of Lady Ashburton

Oil on panel; 15¾ × 11¾ ins

Lady Ashburton was a well-known hostess and collector, much admired by Thomas
Carlyle. She was also a friend of G.F. Watts, and bought from him two small versions
of Love and Death and Time, Death and Judgement.

G F Watts - Ellen Terry at the Piano

Inscribed: ‘Ellen Terry’
pencil
12 × 8¾ ins

Despite Ellen Terry’s blooming theatrical career, she willingly sacrificed the stage at the age of only 16 to marry G.F. Watts, who was 30 years her senior. Within a year
the marriage had failed. A later deed of separation cited “incompatibility of temper”.

This rather tender drawing by Watts shows the young Ellen at the piano. It was
formerly in the collection of Watts’s adopted daughter Lilian Chapman (née
Mackintosh); who inherited a number of the artist’s paintings and drawings.

G F Watts - Blanche

Oil on canvas; 27 × 19¾ ins

Exhibited: Grosvenor Gallery, Watts Exhibition, 1881–1882, no. 128; Manchester, Watts

Literature: Mrs. M.S. Watts, Catalogue of the Works of G.F. Watts, vol. 1, p. 20

‘This is the first portrait Mr. Watts painted of little Blanche Clogstoun, who is seated in an armchair and wears red stockings.’

Blanche Clogstoun was the orphan niece of Mr. and Mrs. Thoby Prinsep, and Watts
became her legal guardian. In 1883 she married Herbert Somers Cocks, and died in
1895. Watts rarely painted children, but in the case of Blanche Clogstoun, a child he
obviously knew well, he has produced a picture of great charm and tenderness.