Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/624

 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. But its social atmosphere—largely of his own creation—was entirely congenial. 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. A new and inspiring friend and sitter at this time was Mrs. Nassau Senior, of whom he painted one of his best portraits, exhibiting it by way of experiment under a pseudonym. He spent some months of the winter 1855–6 in Paris, where he had sittings from Thiers, Prince Jerome Buonaparte, and Princess Lieven among others. About this time he also undertook fresco work for Lord Somers at 7 Carlton House Terrace.

In 1856–7 Watts ventured upon a more extended travel than usual. His old friend (Sir) Charles Newton [q. v. Suppl. I], the archæologist, had for some years been British consul at Mitylene and had often pressed him to go out there for a visit. Now at length, in the autumn of 1856, when the Crimean war was over and Lord Stratford de Redcliffe had obtained the firmans enabling Newton to begin his long-desired task of excavation at Budrum, the site of the ancient Halicarnassus, Watts could not resist his friend's summons. He went out on H.M.S. Gorgon, accompanied by Valentine Prinsep [q. v. Suppl. II], the youngest son of his friends at Little Holland House, and stayed seven months, partly watching the excavations with Newton, partly on a visit to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe at Constantinople, where he painted the portrait of the ambassador now in the National Portrait Gallery. His brush was never idle, and he took in impressions of landscape of which the picture ‘The Island of Cos’ was a chief result. Returning in June 1857, he resumed work on the Lincoln's Inn fresco. During this summer Tennyson was a visitor at Little Holland House, and Watts painted the first of several portraits of him. In this year also Rossetti, with whom Watts was already on friendly terms, brought to him for the first time his young disciple Burne-Jones, whose genius the elder master with characteristic generosity recognised and with whom he maintained to the end a cordial friendship. In 1859 he painted the portrait of Gladstone now in the National Portrait Gallery. In the same year the Lincoln's Inn fresco was completed amidst general congratulations. Watts had in the meanwhile continued his fresco work for Lord Somers in London, and had undertaken new work of the same kind for Lord Lansdowne at Bowood, where his subjects were ‘Coriolanus’ and ‘Achilles parted from Briseis.’ Among his well-known pictures begun in these years were ‘The Genius of Greek Poetry,’ ‘Time, Death, and Judgment,’ ‘Esau,’ ‘Chaos’ (from the original ‘House of Life’ scheme), and ‘Sir Galahad.’

To escape the fogs and glooms of London, Watts spent several winters before and after 1860 at Sandown House, Esher, the home of a sister of Thoby Prinsep. Here he lived in the intimacy of the Orleans princes, then at Claremont, and of Sir Alexander and Lady (Lucy) Duff Gordon and their circle, including George Meredith [q. v. Suppl. II]. He was a skilled rider, and gained health hunting with the Old Surrey foxhounds and the Duc d'Aumale's harriers on his favourite thoroughbred mare Undine. He took an eager interest and such share as his strength enabled him in the volunteer movement of the time. In the following years he formed a new and affectionate intimacy with Frederic Leighton, who in 1866 built the well-known house and studio in Holland Road, almost adjoining the Little Holland House garden. Another valued addition to the circle was Joachim the musician; and yet another, Sir John Herschel the astronomer: Watts's portraits of these friends are among his best work. John Lothrop Motley, then American minister in England, was a welcome sitter about this time. Through the initiative of Dean Milman, Watts was chosen to design figures of St. Matthew and St. John to be done in mosaic in St. Paul's: the dean's further wish that he should be charged with a whole scheme of interior decoration for the cathedral failed to take effect. Portraits of Lord Shrewsbury,