G.F. Watts: The Hall of Fame Portraits of his Famous Contemporaries LeonĂŠe and Richard Ormond
Fig. 3 G.F. Watts, John Everett Millais (1829–96), c.1871 (no. 15)
Fig. 4 G.F. Watts, James Martineau (1805–1900), c.1873, oil on canvas, 257⁄8 x 21 in (65.5 x 53.3 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London
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Joachim (fig. 2) and Charles Hallé, whom he painted in 1867 and 1870, respectively, and a clutch of painters who were transforming the aesthetic landscape of mid-Victorian Britain. These were Watts’s fellow-spirits, champions of art for art’s sake, battling the philistinism and materialism of the age. D.G. Rossetti, one of the founders of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood in 1848, was an artist and poet whose dreamy and sensual images of women opened up a new vein of aesthetic imagery. Among Rossetti’s acolytes was William Morris, another artist-poet, whose brilliant wallpapers and furnishings were revolutionizing interior design and lifestyle. Morris (no. 12) and Rossetti (no. 13) were painted by Watts around 1870, to be followed by three of the greatest British artists of the age, Frederic Leighton (no. 14), John Everett Millais (fig 3, no. 15) and Edward Burne-Jones (1870; Birmingham City Museums and Art Gallery).14 Their portraits, together with that of Rossetti were given by Watts to the sitters as a gesture of friendship. Rossetti’s portrait came back to Watts to be included in the Hall of Fame with that of Morris; the portrait of Millais was given to the National Portrait Gallery by his family; Leighton’s remained with him; while that of Burne-Jones, originally promised to the National Portrait Gallery, was included in a large gift of pictures to Birmingham. All four portraits were conceived in the same spirit of hero-worship and belong by right to the series. The next decade is something of a let-down after this burst of activity. True, in 1873 Watts painted powerful studies of the theologian James Martineau (fig. 4), the political scientist John Stuart Mill (no.17) and the statesman Charles Dilke (no. 16), but these were secondary versions of commissioned works, not subjects selected by the artist himself. The people that Watts did ask to sit were an odd mixture: the relatively obscure colonial governor, John Peter Grant (1873), whose administration in Jamaica Watts had admired; Robert Lowe (c.1874), later Lord Sherbrooke, an ardent advocate of reform and a talented chancellor of the exchequer in the Liberal government of 1868–73; and William Lecky (1878), the historian and essayist, whose History of
England in the Eighteenth Century is known to have impressed the artist.15 A weak drawing of the head of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, is a reminder of the abortive commission from Lincoln’s Inn for a whole-length portrait of the future king. State portraiture was not Watts’s forte. The Hall of Fame series picked up speed again in the 1880s. The portrait of the poet and critic Matthew Arnold (1880; no. 18) is one of the artist’s best and one of his most cheerful. It does seem to embody something of Arnold’s ‘sweetness and light’. It was followed by the portrait of the statesman Lord Dufferin and Ava (1881; fig. 7, p. 20), a second portrait of Frederic Leighton (1881), a magisterial portrait of Cardinal Manning (no. 19) and one of the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, at that time leader of the conservative opposition in the House of Lords and a future prime minister (both these last 1882). A powerful portrait of Lord Lytton, shown as a contemplative poet rather than a Fig. 5 G.F. Watts, 1st Earl of Lytton (1831–91), c.1884, statesman (he had been Viceroy of India), was oil on canvas, 25½ x 20½ in (64.8 x 52 cm), National painted in 1884 (fig. 5). There is then a dip in Portrait Gallery, London the series until the final flourish of the 1890s. A permanent home for the National Portrait Gallery was by then in the offing, and Watts was keen to fill out his national pantheon. Writers and philanthropists are to the fore in this final group of portraits, George Meredith (1893; no. 21) among the former, Josephine Butler (1894; no. 22) and Charles Booth (c.1901), founder of the Salvation Army, among the latter, with a scattering of statesmen and generals, the Marquess of Ripon (1895), Cecil Rhodes (no. 23) and Earl Roberts (both 1898). Friedrich Max-Müller, the German philologist and Orientalist painted in 1894, exerted a strong influence on both Watts and his wife in the field of religious symbolism.The artist’s choice of sitters often reflected enthusiasms of the moment, coupled with opportune meetings and introductions that paved the way to sittings. Such was his reputation that Watts faced little reluctance on the part of prospective subjects. Sitting to the artist could be regarded as a national duty since the collection was bound for a national institution. The Hall of Fame represents a group of portraits produced over a wide span of time in widely differing circumstances. The final shape of the collection was determined not only by the artist but also by the National Portrait Gallery, the recipient of the collection.Three of his portraits were given to the institution in 1883, before it had found a permanent home, and displayed in temporary quarters at the Bethnal Green Museum.16 Fifteen followed in 1895 while the present gallery building in Charing Cross Road was in course of construction.17 Watts dithered over the gift. Although he had intended that his allegorical works and his portraits of famous sitters should go to the nation, he had never firmly decided which works would go to which institutions, nor was he certain that they would be accepted. In 1887 he lent a selection of portraits and allegorical works to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum), and there was talk of the whole collection going there. As usual he found it difficult to make up his mind. In 1895 Lionel Cust, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, was sent round by the gallery trustees to sound Watts out
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Robert Browning (1812–89), 1866 Oil on canvas, 26 x 21 in (66 x 53.3 cm) M. Watts Catalogue, vol. 2, p. 20; Ormond 1973, vol. 1, pp. 71–2 National Portrait Gallery, London (1001)
The poet Robert Browning was a habitué of Mrs Prinsep’s salon at Little Holland House and one of its foremost luminaries. He was, therefore, a familiar figure in Watts’s life and a friend of many years standing. Writing to thank him for a quotation the artist had sent him in 1867, Browning remarked: ‘You always do me good by sympathy with my intentions, which is more encouraging and gratifying than any praise bestowed upon my work can be to me, for I always feel “praise undeserved is censure in disguise”’ (Brownings’ Correspondence, p. 466). As one of the greatest poets of the age, Browning was a natural target for Watts’s brush. The latter had painted Tennyson for the third time in 1864 (see no. 8), and it may be that the Browning portrait was conceived as a sequel.The exact date of the picture is uncertain but it was finished by the autumn of 1866 when the artist sent it to the French Gallery in London, along with the portrait of Tennyson. The art critic of the Athenaeum (no. 2037, 10 Nov. 1866, p. 613) described them in ‘noble companionship, and [they] are noble works. The former [Browning] delights us as one of the painter’s most nearly perfect pictures. A real work of art there is in this painting all the higher qualities of portraiture’. Watts recorded Browning in profile without the symbolic attributes that characterize the Tennyson. Light falls on the powerfully moulded features: the broad, domed forehead; the Grecian nose; the deeply shadowed eyes; the full lips covered by beard and moustache; and the tousled hair. There is a classic simplicity to the medallion-like image that brings out Browning’s rough-hewn personality and force of intellect. A photograph of Browning by Elliott & Fry showing a similar image to the painting may have provided the artist with some assistance in the matter of likeness (National Portrait Gallery). Watts sent Browning a photograph of his portrait (probably one by Hollyer) at the very end of the poet’s life. ‘How good and kind of you to give me the beautiful photograph’, Browning wrote to Watts on 12 July 1889, ‘Surely nothing better in its way was ever produced – so far as my experience goes.Thank you most truly. I wish I, or my sister, had been at home when you called with Mrs Watts. We should have greatly valued your visit’ (G. Watts Fig. 12 Robert Browning, 1860, D’Allesandri, Rome, Letters).To his son Pen Browning the poet confided 4 x 21⁄2 in (10.2 x 6.4cm), Rob Dickins Collection, that the photograph ‘is better than the Picture itself ’ Watts Gallery (Browning Letters, p. 312). The two men had met and corresponded occasionally over the years, and Watts felt sorrow at the death of the poet in 1889. He told Emilie Barrington that ‘the loss of Browning was a thing it was difficult to make up one’s mind to, though he had lived a long and full life … the better part of him could never die where the Anglo-Saxon language was spoken’ (Barrington 1905, pp. 195–6).
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11. Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), c.1868–9 Oil on canvas, 26 x 21 in (66 x 53.3 cm) M. Watts Catalogue, vol. 2, p. 29; R. Ormond 1973, vol. 1, pp. 88–9 National Portrait Gallery, London (1002)
Fig. 13 Thomas Carlyle, c.1860s, photographer unknown, 61⁄4 x 4½ in (15.9 x 11.4 cm), Rob Dickins Collection, Watts Gallery
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13. Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–82), c.1870–71 Oil on canvas, 26 x 211⁄8 in (66.1 x 53.5 cm) M. Watts Catalogue, vol. 2, p. 137; NPG Later Victorian Portraits; Marsh 2008 National Portrait Gallery (1011)
Fig. 15 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, c.1860s, W. & D. Downey, 4 x 2½ in (10.2 x 6.4 cm), Rob Dickins Collection, Watts Gallery
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15. Sir John Everett Millais (1829–96), 1871 Oil on canvas, 251⁄2 x 201⁄2 in (64.8 x 52.1 cm) M. Watts Catalogue, vol. 2, p. 109; NPG Later Victorian Portraits National Portrait Gallery, London (3552)
Fig. 18 Sir John Everett Millais, 1857, albumen print, by (George) Herbert Watkins, 73⁄8 x 51⁄2 in (18.8 x 14.1 cm), National Portrait Gallery, London
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