George Frederic Watts O.M. R.A. (1817-1904)
G.F. Watts, painter, sculptor, polemicist, saw himself as a pioneer of artistic thought, destined to enlighten his countrymen and women and raise the tone and stature of British art. In a career that spanned the great reforming Victorian era, Watts painted for the nation penetrating portraits of its leaders. He worked apart from Pre-Raphaelite colleagues, painting with a broader brush to address controversial issues of the age.
A key figure in the revival of the nude and classicism in British art, Watts invented a universal symbolic vocabulary to evoke life and death. His haunting, transcendental works attracted artists of the European Symbolist movement. Yet his abstract paint surface, intended to stimulate and provoke the viewer, is to this day unsettling.
One of the first recipients of the Order of Merit introduced by King Edward VII, Watts presented the Hall of Fame portraits to the National Portrait Gallery, London. He presented his major Symbolist paintings to the opening of the National Gallery of British Art (Tate Britain) and to inaugurate international galleries of modern art around the world.
See VFG Publications:
- G.F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian (Yale University Press, 2004)
See VFG Special Exhibitions:
- Hope (Christie’s, 2006)
- The Vision of G.F. Watts(Watts Gallery, 2004)
See also Bookshop and Lectures
Mary Seton Watts (1849-1938)
The Symbolist craftswoman and creator of one of Britain’s most remarkable Art Nouveau buildings, founded communities of potters in Compton, Surrey, and in the Inverness-shire highlands.
Married to the world-famous artist G. F. Watts O.M. R.A., Mary Seton Watts associated with the finest designers, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Walter Crane, Charles Robert Ashbee, Alexander Fisher, Gertrude Jekyll and Sir Edwin Lutyens.
Her terracotta garden pottery and architectural finials, a multicultural blend of Celtic Revival and Art Nouveau forms, ornamented Arts and Crafts gardens throughout Britain and abroad.
See VFG Publications:
- Archibald Knox & Mary Seton Watts ‘Modern Celtic Art’ Garden Pottery
- Watts Chapel: An Arts & Crafts Memorial
See VFG Special Exhibitions:
- Mary Seton Watts (1849-1938) Unsung Heroine of the Art Nouveau