Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/628

 example by unremitting industry and lofty purpose, by sweetness, dignity, and generosity of mind and character, and by the absolute devotion of all his powers to the benefit of his race and country as he conceived it. Other English artists before him who had thought nobly of their art and its mission, such as James Barry [q. v.] and Benjamin Robert Haydon [q. v.], had been deluded by pride and vanity into crediting themselves with gifts and aptitudes which they did not possess. Watts was beyond measure both generous in his estimate of other men's work and modest in his estimate of his own. A sense of failure pursued him always, yet never embittered him nor deterred him from striving after what he conceived to be the highest. 'I would have liked,' he said, 'to do for modern thought what Michelangelo did for theological thought.' But even to the genius of Michelangelo his achievement was possible only because of the great and unbroken collective traditions, both technical and spiritual, which he inherited. 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. 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. 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. The same is true of many of his purely poetic compositions, whether from the classics or from later romantic literature, such as 'Diana and Endymion,' 'Orpheus and Eurydice' (especially in the first version), and 'Fata Morgana.' Where various versions of the same subject on different scales exist, it is generally the smaller rather than the larger or monumental version which is technically the most satisfying and the most directly handled. Watts might easily have been a master of brilliant and showily effective technique had he chosen. Some of his earlier work shows a remarkable aptitude that way; but he deliberately checked it, and laboured all his life, humbly and experimentally, to emulate the higher and subtler qualities which roused him to enthusiasm in Attic sculpture and Venetian painting. The result is generally a certain reticent and tentative method of handling, which does not, however, exclude either splendour of colouring or richness and vitality of surface. Something of the same reticence and tentativeness, the same undemonstrative brushwork, with an earnest and often highly successful imaginative endeavour to bring to the surface the inward and spiritual character of his sitters, marks the whole range of his portraits; at least of his male portraits; sometimes in those of women, as of Mrs. Cavendish Bentinck and her children. Lady Margaret Beaumont, Mrs. Nassau Senior, Mrs. Percy Wyndham, he let himself go, and produced effects of splendid opulence and power. 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. The face was long, the features finely cut, the expression thoughtful and benign. His hair was brown, with a full moustache drooping into the beard; in later years it turned grey almost to whiteness and the beard was worn shorter. In and after middle age, with a small velvet skull-cap worn on the back of his head, he bore a remarkable resemblance to the portraits of Titian. There are many portraits of him, mostly by his own hand: one of the best is that which he painted in middle life for Sir William Bowman and is now in the Tate Gallery. He had a leisurely fulness and pensiveness in his way of speaking, and a beautiful simple courtesy and geniality of manner.
 * [Life of Watts by his widow (3 vols. 1912), kindly communicated in MS.; personal knowledge; The Times, 2 July 1904; Julia Cartwright, Life and Work of G. F. Watts (Art Journal Easter Annual, 1896); Watts, by R. E. D. Sketchley; G. F. Watts, by G. K. Chesterton; George Frederic Watts, by J. E. Phythian; G. F. Watts, Reminiscences, by Mrs. Russell Barrington; George Frederic