Watts Magazine Issue 4 by Watts Gallery

WATTS Magazine Issue 4 Autumn 2008 £1

Watts in the City Parables in Paint St. Paul’s Cathedral Victorian Visionary Guildhall Art Gallery Victorian Artists in Photographs The Forbes Galleries, New York, USA

G. F. WATTS Victorian Visionary Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WATTS GALLERY COLLECTION

This beautifully illustrated book, which includes historic photographs and archival materials, encompasses the entire 70-year career of George Frederic Watts. Essays by leading scholars examine the artist’s output, life, reception and legacy. Accompanies an exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery, London. 300pp. 220 colour illustrations £40.00

Yale University Press 2

www.yalebooks.co.uk

ben Nicholson, palazzo Ducale, Urbino, 1959. pencil and pink wash on paper. 620 x 470 mm (242/₅ x 18¹/₂ inches).

FlaviaOrmond Fine Arts O L D MAS TER & M ODERN D RAWI N GS 3 Netherton Grove, London sw10 9tq

by appoiNtmeNt oNLy

telephone + 44 (0) 20 7352 4444 Facsimile + 44 (0) 20 7352 2235 email ﬂavia@ﬂaviaormond.com

www.ﬂaviaormond.com

Gallery News

Thank You Watts Gallery is deeply grateful to all its benefactors and major donors:

Watts Gallery Information Point The new Watts Gallery Information Point is housed in part of the old potteries building on the Watts Gallery estate and can be seen as you enter the gate from Down Lane. It will provide updates on the restoration project, an opportunity to watch the new film on G. F. Watts, a select display of Compton Pottery and range of books and gifts. Opening hours: Tuesday - Friday 11am-3pm, Saturday 11am - 5pm, Sunday and Bank Hols 1-5pm. Closed Monday 22 December - 2 January for Christmas.

Esmée Fairbairn Foundation The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation Garfield Weston Foundation John Ellerman Foundation Wolfson Foundation Guildford Borough Council The George John and Sheilah Livanos Charitable Trust Richard Ormond CBE Professor Rob Dickins CBE Christopher Forbes Peter Harrison Foundation The Robert Gavron Charitable Trust An Anonymous Donor David Pike The Pilgrim Trust The Isabel Goldsmith Patino Foundation The Art Fund Foundation for Sport and the Arts J Paul Getty Jnr Charitable Trust Rothschild Foundation The Linbury Trust Finnis Scott Foundation The Ingram Trust English Heritage The Foyle Foundation Billmeir Charitable Trust The Michael Marks Charitable Trust Man Group plc Charitable Trust Hamish Dewar Ltd The Derek Hill Foundation KPMG Foundation The Geoffrey and Carole Lawson Charitable Trust Fidelity UK Foundation The Fenton Arts Trust

Watts Magazine Issue 4 Watts Gallery, Down Lane Compton, GU3 1DQ 01483 810235 info@wattsgallery.org.uk www.wattsgallery.org.uk Cover - G. F. Watts, Time, Death and Judgement St. Paul’s Catherdral

New Film on G. F. Watts Watts Gallery has commisioned, with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund, a new film on the life and work of G. F. Watts. It is presented by Dr. Tristram Hunt who is an expert in Victorian history and an increasingly familiar face on television history documentaries. The film features interviews with amongst others, the sculptor Antony Gormley, plawright Patrick Marber and the Director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sandy Nairne. See page 22.

Friends Update The drive to increase the number of Friends of Watts Gallery has reached another landmark, now reaching more than 700. There has been a big increase in the number of Family friends, who get priority booking for the Family Art Workshops as well as people who have joined the Friends for life. An anonymous donor who is match funding every new Friend for the next three years means that a £20 single membership becomes worth £55 to the Gallery with Gift Aid. Friends get free entry to G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary at Guildhall Art Gallery from 11 November - 26 April 2009 and will be the first people to visit the newly restored Gallery.

Editor - Andrew Churchill marketing@wattsgallery.org.uk

New Watts Gallery Website

Advertising - Kim Jenner, Jane Grylls 0207 300 5751

Watts Gallery’s new website has been launched giving access to the Watts Gallery Collection database. There will be a host of other features including blogs from the Director and Curator. www.wattsgallery.org.uk

From the Heart of the Village to the International Stage Perdita Hunt, Director

It is such a relief to be able to talk about ‘when’ we start the restoration of Watts Gallery rather than ‘if ’. In the recent summer storms, yet more water came in through different holes in the roof as a reminder of why the Hope Project is so urgent and necessary. We are so delighted to have received the green light from the Heritage Lottery Fund and we could not have secured the grant of £4.3m without the generosity, faith and commitment of our benefactors, donors, Friends and volunteers.

be changes but I hope, in time, you will see them as improvements. We must also ensure that we keep the Watts flame alive as we restore the centre for Watts. I am delighted that we will be able to see many of you at G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary at Guildhall Art Gallery, and Parables in Paint at St Paul’s Cathedral. I hope too that many of you will drop in to see us at the Watts Gallery Information Point in the Old Potteries building on the Watts Gallery Estate. For those who feel like treating themselves to a trip to New York, do join us for the private view of Victorian Artist in Photographs – Selections from The Rob Dickins Collection at The Forbes Galleries in New York on Thursday 6 November. We see the next two years as offering a ‘Gallery without walls’ programme and we are determined to maintain the interest and momentum that you have helped us to build in the last few years.

The Free Family Open Day held in July (pictured above) was another resounding success. It was particularly gratifying to have so many young families enjoying the day with all the workshops fully booked and big groups of children eagerly listening to stories told by Val Biro, the children’s author and illustrator who also brought along his car, Gumdrop. Watts Gallery has really succeeded in getting the backing of the local community as events like this go to prove and we are so grateful for all the support we are offered.

It is with some fear and trepidation that we embark upon this next stage of our journey, but with support and encouragement of so many of you I can only hope that we will save one of the most beautiful small This has been a journey of some four years, and we are galleries in Europe in a way which will satisfy, surprise at the end of the beginning! Our efforts must now turn and comfort all of you who care so much about Watts to ensuring that the team working on the restoration Gallery, its collection and its vision. Thank you for your of the Gallery undertakes the work with the care and support and please join us as often as you can over the sensitivity so necessary to ensure that you feel that we next few months. We need you and your Friends more have not lost all the character which is so special about than ever! Watts Gallery and which makes it unique. There will 5

Photograph by Barbara Knight

Remembering John George Perdita Hunt, Director On my first day as Director at Watts Gallery, as the size of the task in hand started to become clear to me, a friendly face popped their head round the door to say hello. It was John George. I had not seen him for fifteen years. The first thing he said was that the Arts and Crafts Movement in Surrey would provide full support to the Gallery in its attempt to rescue the building and if necessary there would be some money. He also offered his own help. John has been a man of his word. One afternoon the then Curator Richard Jefferies rushed in with a Sotheby’s catalogue announcing the sale of Watts’s love letters. “We have to buy these” were his words. I could see immediately that this struck a chord with John. He looked into the middle distance and said “I will give you the money”. He did and together with other generous donations to reach a higher price than the estimate, we secured the letters for the archive.

and helped the Gallery establish strategic partnerships with the Courtauld Institute and the University for the Creative Arts in Farnham. The Archive Study Room in the restored Watts Gallery, will be named after him.

Collection News Mark Bills, Curator It is a very exciting time for the collections which are moving from the haven of Watts Gallery, back for exhibition in the metropolis or into storage so that restoration can finally begin. To be able to do this has meant a great deal of conservation work which is ongoing. Hamish Dewar has generously conserved a large number of works which look fresher and closer to what Watts had intended for them whilst their frames have been similarly revitalized by Ben Pearce who has also made and fitted three new frames for After the Deluge, Evolution and Can These Bones Live? The remaining drawings for the Guildhall and St Paul’s exhibition are being mounted and framed. The Achilles Frieze, is being moved to the conservation centre, Liverpool, during closure, to be conserved.

John had an early background in marketing with Beechams and de la Rue and, in 1959, he founded the Marketing Society, at a time when the discipline of marketing was fairly new. In the 1970s, following his interest in architecture, he became Managing Director of the London Building Centre and Building Centre Trust, the exhibition centre for architecture and building technology. For twenty years he was Consultant/Adviser to Barbour Index on architectural and construction design matters, and, in 2001 became a trustee of the British Architectural Library, where he was involved in organizing its move from the RIBA to the Victoria & Albert Museum. A particular debt is owed to him for his support for CRASH, the Construction and Property Industries charity for the homeless, which he helped to establish in 1991.

Unfortunately Watts Gallery was unsuccessful in acquiring Watts’s portrait of Edith Villiers. There was an enormous amount of support for the purchase which was bought for over three-times the top of the estimate. In contrast, the Crown Estate is lending on long-term loan, G. F. Watts’s Carlton House Terrace fresco of Apollo and Diana. We have also just acquired a rare album of photographs by Frederick Hollyer of G. F. Watts’s paintings. In some cases these are the only photographs we have of the works, in others they show an earlier stage of a painting’s development. It is an essential volume for the archive and study centre.

In October 1995 John and a small group of people interested in the inheritance of the Arts and Crafts Movement in Surrey, initiated a Society bearing that name. John George became its Chairman, and remained so until his death. John became a member of the Collections Committee of the Watts Gallery Trust and was a champion for developing Compton as a centre for exploring Victorian art, social history and craft. He instigated the annual Watts Symposium 6

The Rob Dickins Collection, Courtauld and Holman Hunt Dr. Desna Greenhow

The Rob Dickins Collection of Victorian photographs has already stimulated a number of requests from researchers and galleries, wanting to know if there are images of various iconic figures of the Victorian world. The Gallery is lending a series of photographs of William Holman Hunt and his family to the Manchester City Art Gallery, which is holding a large exhibition on the painter this autumn.

Watts was a great admirer of Holman Hunt and his paintings and Hunt was a great admirer of Watts. When the Royal Academy humiliated Hunt and BurneJones by refusing them membership, Watts supported them strongly, and regarded them, as he wrote in a letter to Burne-Jones as â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;the men the future will delight to honourâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. While the Gallery is closed for refurbishment, the collection will be held at the Witt Library in the Courtauld Institute in London, where it can be consulted, and it will also be catalogued in the Watts archive, so there will be plenty of opportunity to search for images of the artists, writers, politicians, and the great and good of the Victorian world who may be of particular interest to you. The complete collection will be viewable on line by Christmas this year.

In The Rob Dickins Collection there are not only photographs of Holman Hunt himself by Barraud, Walery, and Elliott and Fry, but several of his beloved son Cyril as a child and in his teens, and of his second wife Edith, the faithful lover who had to wait for many years before at last he agreed to marry her. There is also a family album, including the photograph above of Edith and William in their house in Sonning, with a portrait of G. F. Watts on the wall behind them. 7

Watts Symposium and the Watts Lecture 2009 Leading international scholars in support of Watts Watts Symposium 2009 26 February 2009, Guildhall Art Gallery, London 27 February 2009, St. Paul’s Cathedral, London The third annual symposium on G. F. Watts will be held over two days in London at the venues exhibiting the touring exhibitions Victorian Visionary and Parables in Paint. The subject matter for the event will look at many aspects of Watts’s art and the context for their creation serving both as an introduction to G. F. Watts and contributing to original Watts scholarship. On the Friday when the event moves to St Paul’s Cathedral the discussions will deal with the spiritual dimension of Watts’s work. There will be a wide range of speakers presenting new research on the subject and include Professor Sir Christopher Frayling and leading The Annual Watts Lecture Wednesday 25 February 2009, 6.30pm international Victorian art scholars. Charterhouse, Godalming Sponsored by the Art Department, Charterhouse Speakers confirmed to date include: Egotism and Altruism: Watts and the Tate Dr Caroline Arscott Senior Lecturer in NineteenthAlison Smith, Curator, Tate Century British Art, Courtauld Institute of Art Mark Bills Curator, Watts Gallery Judith Bronkhurst Art Historian, Courtauld Institute, G. F. Watts was the only artist to donate works to the Tate Gallery when it was established in 1897. At London the time this was widely perceived to be an altruistic Barbara Bryant Consultant Curator and Co-Author gesture in that his pictures were seen to offer moral G. F. Watts Victorian Visionary (Guildhall 2008-2009) and Author of G. F. Watts: Portraits – Fame & Beauty in and spiritual consolation as well as enhancing the reputation of the British school. However, from Victorian Society (NPG 2004-2005) around the time of the Second World War many of James Dewar Administrator, Lincoln’s Inn the works included in the bequest disappeared into Veronica Franklin Gould Author of G. F. Watts: The the gallery’s stores never to re-emerge, testimony Last Great Victorian (Yale, 2004) and Curator of The to changes in value which made Watts’s gift appear Vision of G. F. Watts (Watts Gallery, 2004) Professor Sir Christopher Frayling Vice-Provost and redundant. This lecture looks at the Watts bequest in relation to other art legacies, and examines the problem Rector, Royal College of Art, Chairman, Arts Council it presented in terms of the conditions it imposed, the of England on-going relationship between the Tate and the Watts Leonée Ormond Professor Emerita, King’s College, estate, as well as shifts in taste and reputation. London John Price Historian, King’s College, London Alison Smith is a Curator at Tate and author of The David Stewart Art Historian, UA Huntsville Victorian Nude: Sexuality, Morality and Art, MUP 1996, Hilary Underwood Tutor in the History of Art, contributed to Representations of G. F. Watts, Ashgate University of Surrey and Curatorial Advisor, Watts 2004, and co-wrote the catalogue for the hugely Gallery popular show Millais, at Tate Britain in 2007. Martin Warner Treasurer, St Paul’s Cathedral See page 39 to book your place See page 39 to book your place 8

British art on Paper Auction 10 December 2008

SIMEON SOLOMON (1840-1905) A Prelude to Bach (detail) signed with device and dated ‘1868’ (lower right) pencil, watercolour and bodycolour on paper laid on canvas 17 x 25 in. (43.2 x 65 cm.)

£200,000 -300,000

Enquiries Harriet Drummond Director and Head of Department hdrummond@christies.com +44 (0)20 7389 2271

Auction Preview at Watts Gallery, Touring Exhibitions from Watts Gallery and Watts in the City Auction Preview

The Scott Collection 21-22 October 2008 Watts Gallery, Compton Valerie Finnis and her husband, Sir David Scott, were avid collectors and during their lives they amassed an exceptional array of British pictures that incorporates Victorian and 20th-century British Art. These pictures are being sold at Sotheby’s on November 19 after a travelling exhibition that has seen the collection visit Hong Kong, Sydney, New York and Compton! Selected highlights will be shown at Watts Gallery for two days.Proceeds will go to the Finnis Scott Foundation who have generously supported the Watts Gallery Hope Project.

Touring Exhibitions

Victorian Artists in Photographs: G. F. Watts and his World Selections from The Rob Dickins Collection

The Forbes Galleries, Fifth Avenue, New York, USA 7 November 2008 - 3 January 2009 The Ruskin Library, Lancaster University 4 April - 28 June 2009 This exhibition brings us a step closer to a distant age and offers us the opportunity to see the faces, homes and families of artists whose work is so popular. A chance to stand face to face with the eminent painters, poets and authors of the day including George Frederic Watts. A touring exhibition by Watts Gallery.

Watts in the City

G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint St Paul’s Cathedral, London 1 December 2008 - 30 July 2009 Guildford House Gallery, Guildford 15 August - 12 September 2009

Watts did not possess a conventional religious faith yet he retained a sense of the profound importance of spirituality. The exhibition explores the religious and spiritual dimension of his art and the way that this underpinned his sense of social responsibility. Watts in the Nave St Paul’s Cathedral, London 1 December 2008 - April 2009

G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary Guildhall Art Gallery, London 11 November 2008 - 26 April 2009 Mercer Art Gallery, Harrogate 14 November 2009 - 21 March 2010 Retrospective of one of Britain’s greatest and most original artists. Drawn from the Watts Gallery collection, the exhibition features more than eighty paintings, drawings and sculptures. The works will be returning to London for public display for the first time in 100 years. 10

Time, Death and Judgement and Peace and Goodwill by G. F. Watts will return to the Nave of the great cathedral some 100 years since they were first hung there. Visit www.wattsgallery.org.uk to find out more about the exhibition programme.

Sophie Anderson No Walk Today ESTIMATE £600,000 – 800,000

EXHIBITIONS SELECTED WORKS

Watts Gallery Compton, Surrey 21–22 OCTOBER 2008

THE ENTIRE COLLECTION

Mansfield Traquair Edinburgh 27–29 OCTOBER 2008

Sotheby’s London 14–18 NOVEMBER 2008

A GREAT BRITISH COLLECTION The pictures collected by Sir David and Lady Scott Sold to benefit the Finnis Scott Foundation AUCTION IN LONDON 19 NOVEMBER 2008

ENQUIRIES +44 ( 0 ) 20 7293 5497

SOTHEBYS.COM

Come and experience grand portraits, fascinating London subjects and important Victorian paintings, plus the remains of Roman London's Amphitheatre, all in the heart of the historic City of London. From 11 November to 26 April 2009 our special exhibition is

G F Watts: Victorian Visionary, with free admission for the Friends of Watts Gallery and Friends of Guildhall Art Gallery.

Mon-Sat 10 - 5 (last admission 4.30) Sun: 12 - 4 (last admission 3.45) Adults ÂŁ2.50 Concs. ÂŁ1.00 Children free Admission is free after 3.30 and all day Friday 020 7332 3700 guildhall.artgallery@cityoflondon.gov.uk 12 www. guildhall-art-gallery.org.uk

Watts in the City Mark Bills, Curator

“I love art, and am only desirous that power should be used to place art in England on a level with her best achievements in other directions.” G. F. Watts Throughout the winter and the following spring, the City of London will be celebrating, through exhibitions and events, the life and works of George Frederic Watts. The retrospective exhibition, G. F. Watts Victorian Visionary opens at the Guildhall Art Gallery on 11th November and gives the opportunity for a new audience to view the extraordinary range of this astonishing artist. On 1st December, St Paul’s opens an exhibition in its crypt, G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint, which explores the spirituality of his art alongside the re-installation of two of Watts’s great paintings in the Cathedral’s nave. Watts in London also highlights those parts of London where the art of Watts can be seen, perhaps most originally and movingly, in the monument that is Postman’s Park. (continues over) G. F. Watts, Under the Dry Arch, 1849-50

Watts was a Londoner and he knew only too well the importance of the metropolis as a centre of the British art world. He was born in London’s Queen Street on 23rd February 1817 and died 87 years at Little Holland House, Kensington.

supporting those national institutions, the Tate and National Portrait Gallery, but also the philanthropic schemes of building art galleries in the poorest parts of the city in the South London Gallery and Whitechapel Art Gallery.

As a subject for his pictures, London only features in three paintings which were a response to being disturbed by the increasing poverty in the city: Found Drowned, Under a Dry Arch and The Seamstress. The first two, uniquely for Watts, show the topography of the city, the first an arch of Waterloo Bridge looking towards the south bank and the Hungerford suspension bridge and the second an arch of Blackfriars Bridge looking towards St Paul’s.

One of Watts’s most extraordinary monuments is near to St Paul’s, Postman’s Park, St Botolph’s, dedicated to ‘heroism in every-day life’. “The national prosperity of a Nation,” Watts wrote “is not an abiding possession, the deeds of its people are.” In 1887 he wrote to The Times proposing a project to mark Queen Victoria’s Jubilee of that year. Some thirteen years later it was unveiled to the public. Consisting of a wooden cloister it holds fifty-three memorial tablets commemorating sixty-one men, women and children who gave their lives attempting to save another. These simple yet moving accounts reflect the words “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13).”

Yet if the outline of the metropolis was not to be a prolonged inspiration for Watts, decorating its great public buildings and making art more widely accessible there was to become an enduring passion. ‘I can testify after the experience of some years,” he wrote, “to the humanizing and even encouraging effects works of art can have upon those whose lives are a round of dulnesses [sic], lacking the ordinary enjoyment known to the more fortunate.” Bringing art to all was a mission for Watts and is also expressed in his founding of galleries, his own in London and Compton and

Decorative schemes at the Houses of Parliament and Lincoln’s Inn still testify to Watts’s skill as a fresco artist. In churches particularly, Watts as a deeply spiritual artist, found his voice. He created an extraordinary mosaic of his painting, Time, Death and Judgement to surround a water fountain at St

Postman’s Park, London Photograph by Anne Purkiss

The Nave of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Photograph by Graham Lacdao

Jude’s Whitechapel and his fresco for St James the Less, Pimlico, is now a mosaic after paint began to deteriorate. Watts’s association with St Paul’s lasted nearly half a century and included his involvement in the decorative scheme and the gift of paintings for display in the nave of the Cathedral. His scheme for the apse was never realized but instead Watts designed four compositions for mosaic spandrels representing the four evangelists. St Matthew was completed in 1866, St John in1889, whilst St Luke and St Mark were adapted and not fully completed until the 1890s. Watts’s presence in the nave and in the mosaics near to them make it particular fitting that an exhibition presented concurrently in the Cathedral’s crypt explores Watts’s spirituality. Watts shared with Canon Henry Scott Holland (18471918) a deep empathy for the poor for which the Cathedral was a refuge in the late nineteenth century. Two of the paintings Time, Death and Judgement and Peace and Goodwill from St Paul’s collection, that are re-hung in the nave, arose from this association. Scott Holland, asked G. F. Watts to donate a work of art to St Paul’s Cathedral. Watts and Holland shared similar views

on social reform and the artist’s retrospective of the New Gallery in 1897 fired the clergyman’s desire “to see two great works of his in St. Paul’s.” Watts gifted Time, Death and Judgment to the Cathedral by 1899. To the ‘dear old man’, the Canon wrote, ‘our heartfelt thanks, in the name of all the tramps in the nave. . . [the painting] is perfectly splendid, glowing, beautiful. It quite peoples the church. I have been revelling all day in the glory of it’. It was not until 1908 that Holland’s ambition of having two paintings by Watts in the centre of the cathedral was completed. Mary Watts gave Peace and Goodwill to St Paul’s in 1907. London was where Watts spent most of his working life, where he met influential acquaintances and produced the majority of art. Watts in the City is an opportunity to explore that connection and the extraordinary art that remains. With thanks to Barbara Bryant for her information on the Cathedral paintings. A Watts in the City leaflet is enclosed containing full details of the programme as well as maps of the locations of some of Watts’s most important London sites. Alternatively you can visit our website. www.wattsgallery.org.uk 15

G. F. Watts, Progress, 1888-1904 (detail)

G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary Mark Bills, Curator

“I cannot claim more for my pictures than they are thoughts, attempts to embody visionary ideas.” G. F. Watts

The exhibition has at its heart a simple premise: to explore the art of G F Watts through the collection at Watts Gallery. Its exploration of over sixty of the The description of G F Watts as a visionary artist is at most significant paintings that we hold will be exhibited once both entirely apt and yet slightly paradoxical. We in chronological order to be able to consider how might expect a visionary to be of an earlier age, the era Watts’s art developed over time and the contemporary of the Romantic and William Blake, rather than the age influences that acted upon it. The selection has not of Queen Victoria. Watts was different, for although been without its problems and the decision to include being a giant of his age, familiar to all and respected by or not to include certain paintings has been difficult most, he was also a great individual who was constantly and there will no doubt be some who feel that an exploring images and ideas in a wholly different way important or favourite work has been excluded. It has from his contemporaries. The forthcoming exhibition been a question of balance in representing Watts’s at the Guildhall Art Gallery bears the title Victorian entire output as well as illustrating some of his greatest Visionary and explores the development of the artist visual ideas from a specific and very idiosyncratic from his early work, before Victoria ascended to the collection. In particular the problem of not having throne, to his final works three years after the Queen certain masterpieces from the Tate or elsewhere means had died. The cover quite aptly shows the visionary that this is not an exhaustive retrospective. This being image of Endymion, described by a contemporary critic said, we could not leave out Hope, that most astonishing work, and we are extremely grateful to the owner for as having ‘a certain Blake-like mystery and intensity’. lending to the exhibition. A Munch exhibition would have to have its Scream. A chronological display of Watts also presents the difficulty of which order to place the work with an artist who worked on paintings over such a long periods and produced several different versions of his most significant at different points during his career.

above G. F. Watts, Sunset on the Alps, 1888 right G. F. Watts, Endymion, 1903

What has been clear is what a very special collection we have at Watts Gallery. Not only does it have many of the artist’s most intriguing experiments, but some of the greatest masterpieces that Watts refused to part with. The other significant factor that is revealed is what a significant artist Watts is and how his place in the history of nineteenth-century art needs to be consistently re-asserted. This exhibition is an important landmark in taking such a large body of important Watts work to London, which has a very important historical precedent.

National Portrait Gallery in 2004. Watts Gallery held a retrospective of the artist in 2004, but it has been thirty-four years since a London gallery has shown a retrospective of the artist. It will be very interesting to discover how a new audience will respond to the artist’s work.

The Hope project has presented Watts Gallery with a unique opportunity to reveal its magnificent collection in the metropolis once more and this is significant for a number of reasons. The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue will publish for the The public exhibition of this collection first occurred first time, much new scholarship on Watts and Watts in London when Watts had a gallery extension designed Gallery. Some paintings have never been written about by George Aitchison in 1881 built on to his studio before and all the new information will provide the home at Little Holland House. It was advertised as, foundation of the future development of the collection “the picture gallery at Little Holland House,” where after re-opening. The exhibition also gives us the the public are admitted on Saturdays and Sundays, opportunity of hanging the collection in chronological from two till six – a privilege largely taken advantage of order with a well-lit eye-level hang so that we can by all sorts and conditions of people.” The collection see how the art of Watts develops and have a greater moved to Surrey in 1903 and it was only two years understanding about the collection we house at Watts later in 1905 just after the death of G. F. Watts in July Gallery. All the conservation work that has taken place 1904, that it returned briefly to London as a memorial for the exhibition on the paintings and their frames, exhibition which also toured to Newcastle, Edinburgh, the sculpture and the drawings have happened for the Manchester and Dublin. The collection was able to exhibition and it is my firm belief they will be brought tour because Watts Gallery was extending its galleries new life in a different context. As Watts wrote: “The which were completed for its return for re-display in greatest art, whether plastic or graphic, will be devoted 1906. In 2008 Watts Gallery finds itself in the same to the expression of those ideas and emotions that position, it is closing its doors for building works excite enthusiasm and inspire devotion.” and the collection will once more become a touring exhibition, due to return for the re-opening of Watts The most important motive for the exhibition is to Gallery in 2010. introduce a new generation to the importance of Watts as an artist. His pioneering spirit should be received In 1905, when the collection toured, Watts’s reputation well and much of his approach, the way he expresses was at its height and was seen by record numbers of abstract ideas visually, is arguably more current than people. Since then the reputation of the artist has it was in the artist’s own lifetime. Visionary artists fluctuated, diminishing after the First World War are by their nature individual and an approach that and becoming almost forgotten in the 1940s. In his set them apart from their contemporaries. They also lifetime Watts had numerous retrospectives, five in have a fascination and importance that make them the 1880s, the New Gallery in 1896 and Leighton appeal to each new generation. G. F. Watts is more House in 1903. After his death the touring Memorial than just a representative of the Victorian age, he is an exhibition of 1905 quickly followed, but it was not international artist whose dynamic art spans time. until 1954 that the Tate held a retrospective. In 1974 G. F. Watts: A Nineteenth-Century Phenomenon opened G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary is at Guildhall Art at the entirely appropriate venue of the Whitechapel Gallery, London from 11 November to 26 April 2009. Art Gallery. Since then Watts has appeared alongside Rossetti and Burne-Jones in a symbolist exhibition Friends of Watts Gallery will gain free entry to the at the Tate in 1997 and in a portrait exhibition at the exhibition on presentation of their membership card. The accompanying book by Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant is published by Yale University Press. 300 pages, 250 illustrations. pb £20, hb £40. 18

top left G. F. Watts, Alexander Constantine Ionides and His Wife Euterpe, with Their Children Constantine, Alexander, Aglaia and Alecco, c.1841-1842 top right G. F. Watts, Self Portrait in Old Age, 1903-1904 above G. F. Watts, Ophelia, 1875-1880 right G. F. Watts, Sower of the Systems, 1902

left G. F. Watts, The Denunciation of Cain, 1871-1872 top G. F. Watts, Peace and Goodwill, 1887 above G. F. Watts, Finished Compositional Design for the Spandrel of St. John for St. Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral, (detail)

G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint Hilary Underwood, Curator of the Exhibition Watts’s interest in religious painting is clear even to the casual visitor to Watts Gallery. Biblical subjects such as the Eve paintings and The Good Samaritan dominate the walls of the galleries. But we are now so distant from the Victorian religious past that it is harder to discern where Watts stands in the religious life of his time. A good starting point is to examine what he chose to paint, and by implication what he avoided representing. Watts was deeply affected by his Christian upbringing. Even his landscapes can be filled with moral meanings and religious symbolism. The Two Paths, a late work inspired by a frightening dream, echoes Jesus’ words about the broad path leading to destruction and the strait gate and narrow way leading to eternal life. However Watts’s choice of biblical subjects is surprisingly restricted. From the Old Testament Watts chiefly selects stories from the book of Genesis, particularly the archetypal narratives from the earliest chapters; Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah. As in the Denunciation of Cain these stories are dominated by sin and its punishment. From the New Testament, Watts illustrates Christ’s parables such as The Good Samaritan and The Prodigal Son. Conspicuously, except for commissioned mural designs, he hardly represents Jesus unlike his contemporaries the Pre-Raphaelites. Possibly the best known Victorian religious painting is William Holman Hunt’s Light of the World showing Jesus as a personal saviour, knocking on the overgrown door which stands for the sinner’s soul. Watts’s distinctive choice of subjects relates to his early experience of religion. Watts was raised in the Church of England within the early nineteenth-century Evangelical movement. This emphasised the moral conduct and social responsibility which imbues his work. Within this puritanical Christian tradition the representation of God or Jesus was idolatrous. Watts was lucky that his artistic vocation was encouraged in this environment. Watts’s childhood religious experience emphasised a vengeful, death-dealing God. For a sensitive boy who had lost two younger brothers and his mother by the age of nine, this must have been profoundly traumatic. It suggests deep rooted sources

for his artistic preoccupation with sin and death. Only in his later life, partly through the influence of his wife Mary Watts, does Watts explore a more benign spiritual presence, in such paintings as The All Pervading, and Love Steering the Boat of Humanity. His childhood experience also detached him from straightforward religious belief. He retained a deep sense of spirituality, which deepened in his last years but paradoxically for one of Victorian England’s most revered religious artists he had no personal dogmatic faith. It is a great privilege, but it is also fitting that the first exhibition exploring Watts’s religious art can take place at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Watts had a more than forty-year relationship with the institution. The exhibition covers this, including drawings and sketches for his mosaic designs there which have never before been displayed. Watts first seems to have regarded St. Paul’s in a critical light. The silhouette of St. Paul’s appears in the background of Under a Dry Arch (1850, Watts Gallery), its grandeur in pointed contrast to the degradation and despair of the down-and-out woman in the foreground. But in the mid-nineteenth century, St. Paul’s was entering a period of spiritual renewal. In the service of this vision, a campaign to beautify the building began. Watts already had considerable experience of mural decoration. In 1863 he was invited to submit designs to decorate the apse. Watts’s large finished drawing of the Transfiguration for this scheme is one of the rare occasions when the artist depicted Jesus. This scheme was unrealised. However Watts designed mosaics of the four gospel writers or Evangelists for the four eastern spandrels under the dome. St. Matthew was made in 1866, St. John in 1889 and St. Mark and St. Luke in 1891. For the last two, Watts’s sketches were realised by W. E .F. Britten, to the detriment of their original grandeur. However St. John is Watts’s own, shown in the powerful finished drawing. St. John is the most mystical of the Evangelists and Watts shows him looking up to heaven for inspiration. G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint is at St. Paul’s Cathedral from 1 December 2008 - 30 July 2009. 21

London Landmarks by G. F. Watts The Hall of Fame, Postman’s Park and Physical Energy Sandy Nairne, Patrick Marber and Antony Gormley In a new film about G. F. Watts, Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery and Patrick Marber, the playwright whose work Closer features a memorial initiated by Watts, both talk about the artist’s keen sense of the importance of acknowledging greatness both in the ‘ordinary’ and in the ‘famous’. The sculptor Antony Gormley is also interviewed. In the following extracts they explain why they believe Watts was important. The full film, narrated by the historian Dr. Tristram Hunt, can be seen at the Watts Gallery Information Point in Compton throughout the restoration period. Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, London

below G. F. Watts, John Stuart Mill, 1873 A version of that given by G. F. Watts to the National Portrait Gallery and on show in the Hall of Fame at NPG.

“I think that Watts would have been very well aware that, starting the National Portrait Gallery and looking back through history and bringing together those men and women contributing to British history and culture would have been important, but I think he was very aware as he began to think about what became his ‘Hall of Fame’ that there was another whole idea here that would be about contemporary Victorians; those of his own age that he admired, who he thought were also the contributors to British history and culture. Watts had a very clear idea that he cared about the well known names, those that were known for their contribution to society and change but he also cared passionately about those who were unknown and of course the project at Postman’s Park which commemorates in the ceramic plaques the heroic deeds of so called ‘ordinary people’ I always think is the complement to these painted portraits in the Hall of Fame and I think it is actually both sides of the same coin in terms of Watts’s thinking. That he wasn’t just about heroism, it was about the notion of achievement, what could be achieved, what could be done so much better, and why we should care about it.”

Patrick Marber Playwright

Antony Gormley Sculptor

“I first discovered Postman’s Park quite by chance in 1996. I had just moved in to the area, at the time I was writing my play Closer, and I was led to the memorial, and read it and was charmed by it. I had never heard of G. F. Watts before, I read up on him a little and was completely charmed by the whole enterprise of this memorial and very moved that it hadn’t been completed in his lifetime, that there are still empty spaces there for someone to put a plaque up. As a writer I was completely enamoured by the unsentimental language of the plaques and the strangeness of the language, that it just spelt out the facts of what had occurred.

“I had known Physical Energy as that big equestrian statue in the middle of Hyde Park but I hadn’t realised who had made it and it was actually seeing the plaster at Compton that got me to realise how these different experiences of his work fitted together. Here was a man who had decided certain things were true and that he had to make an art out of that truth and he didn’t really care about a lot of the things that were either fashionable in his time or what the financial outcome of following that path would be.

This is an evocation of a general principle about movement and, in a way, the potential of mass to become energy that is almost prophetic and in its I actually used the memorial in the original production resistance to the classical tradition of the equestrian of the play Closer at the National Theatre, it was monument which is always named, always has the opened in May 1997. The last scene of the play is set at historical narrative attached. He has liberated it in the Postman’s Park...the main way it is used is that one of same way that Duchamp-Villon was later to liberate the characters in my play steals her identity from Alice the horse from the specificity of illustration and in Ayres which is one of the names on the plaques. that he is a pioneer.” I return to Postman’s Park every two or three months and I regard it as a little spiritual oasis in the heart of London.”

above Plaque in Postman’s Park, Photograph by Anna Purkiss right G. F. Watts, Physical Energy, Photograph by Pattie Boyd

Architectâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view of the Sculpture Gallery

Restoring Watts Gallery Adam Zombory-Moldovan, Architect Much has been said and written about the magical atmosphere, tranquility and gentle ambience of Watts Gallery. In responding to the significance of the Gallery as the home for its collection of G. F. Watts’s and Mary Seton Watts’s work and creating a place to display and preserve the collection, a key aspiration of our design and conservation work is to preserve and enhance Watts Gallery as a place of reflection, study and contemplative absorption in the Wattses world to reinforce the wonderful, intimate bond between the art and the Gallery. Watts Gallery was first opened on April 1st 1904, three months before the death of the artist. Commissioned by G. F. Watts and his wife, Mary, it was intended to provide a permanent home for their large collection of Watts’s work. Open to the public through a turnstile, with free entry on certain days, the establishment of the Gallery enshrined their vision of ‘Art for All’. The first half of the place’s last 104 years saw progressive, major extensions and changes to the Gallery as well as various experimental alterations to try to cure its problematic day-lighting conditions. The neglect and decay the buildings have suffered over the latter half of its life have imbued it with its dishevelled, ‘lost world’ patina that delights all who visit. No building can survive neglect for long, and in particular the Gallery is now unable to provide a safe home for its display collection without some essential, substantial improvements. Importantly the context for our design is one of a Gallery much altered and developed over its relatively short life. The Gallery was first extended soon after opening, in 1905, and c.1925 with other incremental extensions over time. The enlarged gallery was also able to house some of Watts’s larger sculptures including the two monumental plaster models, Physical Energy and the statue of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. The buildings were also home to Mary’s Compton Potters’ Guild apprentice potters whose digs were in the present Curator’s house and who used what later became the Lower Gallery as their recreation room.

The atmosphere at the Gallery is inimitable, a much loved survivor from a gentler, rural age, outside the orbit of the brisk world of the urban gallery circuit. The eccentricities of the building, its flaws, aged fabric and landscape add to its special character which the scheme aims to preserve, while changing to meet the current and future needs of the Gallery. The architect of the first phase of works was Christopher Hatton Turnor (1873-1940). Although he had never qualified as an architect, it appears he studied with Lutyens for a short time. The style of the Gallery and former potters’ hostel refers to long, low, gabled Arts and Crafts houses that proliferated in Surrey from the 1890s, yet it was innovatively built in the beloved material of the 20th Century, mass concrete, dressed in rough-cast, course-textured render. Interestingly, innovative construction materials were also used later in the Sunken Gallery - early imported plasterboard from the USA - and asbestos wall panels. The 1904 building comprised a ‘C’-shaped gallery with two open entrance loggias connecting the potter apprentices’ hostel at the eastern end and their recreation room and further dormitories at the western end of the Gallery, both of two storeys. The ‘C’shaped gallery was never a total success; 150 paintings were crammed onto the walls, with frames touching. Watts himself complained to a friend that “everything must be crowded here. I am sick of the whole thing.” The Main Gallery was also designed by Turnor and opened in 1906 to provide more space, particularly for some of Watts’s larger paintings. The potters’ passage was also added to give an internal connection between the east and west wings while keeping the apprentices out of public gaze in the galleries. At the same time the Sculpture Studio was constructed to contain Watts’s two monumental sculptures. The huge, timber studio doors in the north elevation came from Watts’s London studio at Little Holland House in Kensington, and a short section of railway track allowed Physical Energy to be winched outside; our design will reinstate this wonderful idiosyncracy. 25

left A photograph from the 1940s shows attempts to control light right Designs for the new lantern roof light as originally installed in 1906

The interior of the Gallery has also been subject to a number of changes over the years. Many of the alterations have attempted to improve the quality of natural light in the galleries. The original Gallery had semicircular blinds fitted in the dormer windows facing onto the original courtyard garden (now the Sunken Gallery), however the galleries suffered from both glare and a deficit of useful light at certain times of the day, and overheating through direct sun in the summer.

levels to provide the conditions required for the long-term preservation of the building, the work and its viewing. The buildings require extensive repairs to the fabric, such as the repair of roofs, gutters and wall finishes, much of which is in poor condition and the building suffers from dampness.

The existing layout of the galleries allows only limited curatorial flexibility for the display and little space for events or special exhibitions. There is a need In the late 1930s the curator, Rowland Alston, for exhibition space which meets current museum instigated alterations aimed at improving the standards for access, security and temporary loans natural day-lighting in the upper Galleries. At his in order that the Gallery can build on the current recommendation, in the late 1940s, the old lantern over resurgence of interest, with focused special interest the main Gallery was removed and lower, iron-framed exhibitions. Space is also needed for safe display of the skylights lights put in. The partition walls at either hidden collection of Watts’s drawings and works on end of the Long Gallery, breaking up the ‘C’-shaped paper as well as Watts Gallery’s Victorian archives. layout, were installed in an attempt to reduce glare and The Gallery is not at present accessible for wheelchair timber louvres were fitted under the Sunken Gallery users and the improvements will at last give access to roof-lights. A photograph of the Main Gallery, taken in all the galleries. the 1940s, shows the trusses in the Main Gallery clad in painted cardboard to block direct views of the skyThe growing success of Watts Gallery has brought light. The experiment seems to have gone some way increased visitor numbers over recent years and to reducing glare but to the terrible detriment of the thoughtfully planned additional car parking, together space, as it had the effect of substantially lowering the with work to the gardens and landscape, will develop loftiness of the ceiling. the special setting of the Gallery buildings. We aim to reinforce the landscape link to the Watts’s house, Our design work addresses many of the Gallery’s most Limnerslease, across the other side of Down Lane, and pressing and long-term problems. The Gallery requires to Mary Watts’s extraordinary cemetery chapel. upgrading of the environmental conditions in which the work is displayed, including better-controlled daylighting, artificial lighting, temperature and humidity 26

The Gallery’s gardens and setting will be revived, replanted and a walking route through new planting schemes will give visitors a glimpse of Physical Energy through tall, glass studio doors revealing the Sculpture Gallery’s extraordinary display on visitors’ arrival. The proposed internal alterations seek to improve their functioning while respecting the original fabric and character of the listed building. Where alterations are required, extensive research has been carried out into historic precedent and appropriate technology and contemporary but sympathetic solutions have been designed. The alterations are not intended to be a pastiche of the original and will be appropriate, yet distinct from the historic fabric. Alterations will use a similar palette of materials to those found in the Gallery, and will be simply detailed in the craftsmanlike manner of the Arts and Crafts original. The buildings will be cautiously restored, preserving the patina of their history, while making them weathertight and stable. Much will be done to improve care of the collection by sensitively introducing environmental control - temperature and humidity - as well as providing new, safe art storage spaces. The joy of the Gallery’s daily and seasonally changing quality of natural light will be preserved, while thoughtful changes to sky-lights and windows will at last give better control over the strength and direction of daylight. This, together with the addition of a discrete, artificial lighting scheme, will mean that for the first time ever the collection will be seen under appropriate

light - Watts himself always spoke of how his work was best viewed in daylight. Close control of lighting will also allow his works on paper to be displayed safely for the first time. A new, ‘Showcase’ gallery, replacing the Potters’ derelict wash-house, will link the upper and lower gallery levels and help provide accessibility to all of the eight gallery rooms, giving visitors full access to the rehang of the Watts’s work in the newly inter-connected gallery rooms. The currently unsuccessful Sunken and Lower galleries, never properly designed for display, will be reworked to provide atmospheric settings for the collection and for temporary exhibits and to give visitors an introduction to the collection and its story. The original Gallery interiors will be restored and historical research has been done to inform new colour schemes for the galleries providing a range of suitable settings for the permanent collection and for loans. The 1904 Galleries still largely preserve their patterned, fabric ‘Tynecastle’ wall coverings which will be restored to their original colouring of red, painted over a layer of yellow. The now gaudy, gold ceilings of the galleries will be replaced with gilding treatment to closely match the original silvery gilt lacquered surfaces to bring warm, reflected light into those galleries. The lacklustre beige colour schemes will be reworked to provide appropriate warmth and colour to give Watts’s work the background and settings in which the artist himself, who was so passionate about the use of colour and texture, would have delighted. 27

above John Ruskin and William Holman Hunt at Brantwood, Ruskinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house. Their last meeting. Frederick Hollyer, 1894 far left Charles Dickens, Charles Watkins, 1858 left Ellen Terry as Juliet, at The Lyceum, Window & Grove, 1882

Watts in New York Mark Bills, Curator In his lifetime Watts was almost as renowned in America as he was in Britain and can claim to be the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 1884, just fourteen years after its founding. A version of his painting, Love and Life, was exhibited at this exhibition and later traveled to the World’s Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893 and was given by Watts to the people of America, where it was accepted by an Act of Congress in 1894. Despite its removal by the W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), headed by the Superintendent of Purity in Literature and Art, Mrs Emily D. Martin, President Roosevelt moved the painting back to the White House in 1902 and the public wrote in praise of a painting that gave vision to the idea of ‘love inspiring the fainting human soul’. Today, US Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, is inspired by one of Watts’s most iconic images, Hope and his autobiography Audacity of Hope is drawn from a sermon by Reverend Jeremiah Wright who discusses the great painting. It is quite fitting, therefore, that the exhibition Victorian Artists in Photographs: The World of G F Watts is to travel across the Atlantic to be shown at the Forbes Galleries, New York, to a country that showed so much enthusiasm for the artist. The owner of the Gallery, Christopher Forbes, a trustee of Watts Gallery, is himself a passionate advocate of Victorian art and an inspired collector. The exhibition is a selection of highlights drawn from the extraordinary collection of over 4,000 historic photographs of the Dickins collection, generously donated by Watts Gallery trustee Professor Rob Dickins, CBE. The extent and value of this rich archive has yet to be fully researched and its importance is still in the process of being discovered. The selection on exhibition displays both its breadth and interest and includes two stunning photographs of the great American artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), where his style and character have been delightfully captured. In contrast one of the most moving images is by Frederick Hollyer of

John Ruskin (1819-1900) and William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) meeting for the last time at Ruskin’s home at Brantwood in the Lake District. This remarkable snapshot of highlights underlies a new strand to the development of Watts Gallery as a centre for exploring Victorian art, social history and craft, of which Watts was such an important part.

The Victorians in N.Y. Prof. Rob Dickins CBE America in the latter half of the 19th Century embraced both the work and the public appearances of many great British public figures from the worlds of Art and Literature. Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, William Holman Hunt’s Light Of The World, actress Ellen Terry, the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson and the reading tours of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins were all celebrated by an enthusiastic population. There has also always been a strong link especially with New York and such luminaries, and with this remarkable exhibition from Watts Gallery they are becoming a visual experience once more where names become faces in contemporary photographs of the period, most of them never seen before in the U.S. It was in New York where photography first took hold in the United States with Samuel B. Morse (he of the world famous Morse Code) and his disciples Mathew Brady and Edward Anthony basing their work on techniques learned from Europe. Brady (better known as ‘Brady of Broadway’) in particular started a business taking photographic portraits of the famous and so how appropriate that 150 years later the exhibition of Victorian Artists in Photographs encompassing this same pioneering period and pictures of celebrities should have its American opening in this same exciting city. 29

Photograph by Anna Purkiss

Ode to Watts Gallery Debby Brice, Watts Gallery Benefactor

I fell in love with G. F. Watts even before I reached the Gallery. The first glimpse I had of this extraordinary artists’s compound was the incredibly beautiful cemetery nestling on a nearby hill crisscrossed by paths and surrounded by beautiful trees. It is definitely a place where anyone of any creed and culture would feel near their god and at peace. The cemetery chapel is a remarkable art nouveau building created by the artist’s wife Mary Seton Watts and now listed Grade I. Mary Watts designed the building and helped build it along with the villagers of Compton who also, under Mary’s tutelage, created the Chapel’s amazing interior. Mary and her apprenticed potters turned this brick Chapel into a perfect Arts and Craft building that is totally different from anything else I’ve ever seen.

therefore extremely damp. There were also buckets everywhere to catch the drips from the collapsing roof and the walls were covered with droplets of water. It didn’t seem to matter as this was so clearly the vision of one man and his devoted wife. I had never been particularly interested in Victorian Art before this, but Watts’s work is mesmerising. We had sandwiches in the middle of the freezing main room, but then on our tour Richard Jefferies was so wonderfully entertaining about every aspect of Watts and the Gallery, having lived there most of his life, and Perdita Hunt was so clearly passionate about the place, that their love and excitement made it impossible not to fall under their spell and that of Mr. Watts.

Starting from this perspective the loveliness and quirkiness of the actual Gallery came as no surprise. When I first saw it was wonderfully higgledypiggledy, rather run down, and just the sort of place in which one would love to live in. It turns out that it wasn’t built just as a Gallery at all, but also as a place to house Mary’s apprentice potters. I believe it is the only purpose-built art gallery dedicated to one professional artist’s collection.

I had had no idea that G. F. Watts had been considered by some to be the greatest painter of the Victorian age, but after spending the afternoon walking around the Gallery I was definitely persuaded of its truth. I now realise that the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery are stuffed full of Watts and that he gave one of his greatest works, Love and Life to the American people after having been the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

I was welcomed by the new Director, Perdita Hunt, and the then curator Richard Jefferies and was drawn into the magical world of George Frederic Watts. I was completely enchanted from the start. The gallery has enormous charm despite the fact that it was falling apart at the seams. There was no heating, and was

The Gallery has successfully raised enough money to start the renovation so that Watts’s work can be preserved there for future generations to enjoy. I reiterate that they have made a ‘start’ and much more is needed to make sure that all of you have the chance to fall in love as well! 30

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A Milestone in Collection Care and Access for All Julia Dudkiewicz, Assistant Curator In 2006 Watts Gallery embarked on the ambitious task of recording and photographing its extensive collections for the benefit of all. The cataloguing project has now been completed with every object entered into a specialist collection management database. The catalogued collections are now available as an online resource featuring over 2500 diverse objects, all accessible through the Gallery website. The benefits of the cataloguing project are manifold. Firstly, comprehensive museum documentation is a requirement for achieving Accreditation, a recognized professional standard for museums for which Watts Gallery is applying in the spring 2009. Accreditation will, in turn, facilitate inter-museum loans for temporary exhibitions and insurance arrangements. Secondly, an online catalogue of the Watts Gallery collection has already proven an invaluable research resource for preparing recent exhibitions and displays, as well as a collections management tool for planning all aspects of the restoration project from conservation and off-site storage arrangements to movement control for exhibition loans. Finally, the database serves as a virtual gallery showcasing the entire collection, including un-exhibited artworks in storage, accompanied with descriptions that offer free access to Watts’s vision for the enjoyment of all, very much in keeping with the artist’s ethos of ‘art for all’. Throughout the course of the 20th-Century, due to numerous bequests and donations (particularly from Mary Seton Watts and Lilian Chapman) as well as new acquisitions, the Watts Gallery collection has expanded significantly since 1904 when it only included 109 core works, primarily finished oil paintings and a few sketches, all by G. F. Watts, donated by the artist from his London studio in Kensington.

popularity and circulation of G. F. Watts’s works as reproductions. The catalogue also presents some 800 drawings, 200 sculptures, 200 pieces of pottery, as well as prints, watercolours and ephemera. The nature and scope of the Watts Gallery collection make it a fascinating resource for the study of Watts’s working methods and techniques. Watts worked in a wide range of media including oil paint on canvas and panel, pencil, silverpoint, chalk and charcoal on diverse paper varieties of different colours and textures, and this diversity is well represented within our collection, and recorded on the database. The cataloguing project has revealed some exciting finds including G. F. Watts’s skull cap, an intact piece of the original Watts Gallery wall covering as well as many unique drawings ranging from highly accomplished copies after other artists produced when Watts was just ten, to numerous compositional studies for some of the artist’s famous allegorical pictures, including an early study for Hope sketched on the reverse of a visiting card of a Miss Hope. Another highlight of our drawings collection is a detailed sanguine head study for Love and Life. Mary Seton Watts’s creative output is also preserved at Watts Gallery as the only public museum in the world with a display of 200 pieces of Compton Pottery, ranging from well-known terracotta garden pots to more quirky small coloured pieces, including unusual designs such as a jewellery set of Zodiac sign pendants, Tennyson’s Bust bookends or a Lighthouse lamp stand. The database gives visitors the opportunity to discover the collection for themselves.

Search the collection at www.wattsgallery.org.uk Watts Gallery would like to thank Adlib Museum and Archive Information Systems for their support and sponsorship of the cataloguing project and the dedicated team who have contributed The database includes 250 original oil paintings to creating this lasting resource, in particular Gillian Hardy, alongside over 400 photographic reproductions of Watts’s lesser known or untraced paintings by Frederick David and Barbara Knight, Hilary and Denis Calvert, and Melanie Shearer. Hollyer and other Victorian photographers. The Gallery’s unique set of over 100 commercial colour prints by Emery Walker is testimony to the enormous left G. F. Watts, Study for Love and Life

Creative Writing on Watts Students from Finton House School, Wandsworth, London Painting by Skye

In the Spring of 2008 a year 5 class from Finton House School in Wandsworth visited Watts Gallery and the Watts Chapel. They produced drawings, paintings and creative writing inspired by their visit. Here we re-produce some of their inspiring work. Finton House is an independent, co-educational preparatory school, for children aged 4-11. They aim to equip every child with a lifelong enthusiasm for learning and see the Arts as providing an important stimulus in achieving this aim. There is a strong emphasis on creativity which is visible throughout the curriculum.

The Chapel

Hope Wind in your hair Hope in your soul Water on your toes Cloth on your eyes tied in bows One string one note one lovely song There on a sphere gently curled up where she belongs One pale finger pluckily listening to her hearts desire One small star of hope glimmers in the darkest night It glimmers with lots of might In the darkness of the night. by Ebrina

It was a cold misty morning and as I walked to the Watts grave yard I could see my breath in the air. The gravel crunched under my feet, I heard the birds sing as they hid from me in the trees. The wooden gate was old and crooked. The rusty handle creaked as I pulled it open. The noise of the gate made me want to turn around. I realised I was all alone. The grass was long and pieces of moss hung from the sides of the cross. The curls and lines in the stone made me think of a snakes body slithering in the soil. It made me feel sad the no one was caring for this person. Where was his family? I sat on the grass sketching for half an hour making sure I drew every little detail, when I noticed buttercups were growing in the long grass. They lit up in the sun and made me feel nature was looking after the stone. by Holly 34

Found Drowned by Celeste (jpg. 18)-

Why did you drown? Why did you drown? How do you feel? You look very sad, And awkwardly still. Why did you drown? Your dress looks heavy! Your face is so pale As if resting – what is your story?

The Irish Famine In the Victorian era, three people were found Who looked very sad, with some tears all around. The baby was dead, and the mother looked pale, The father was angry, and there was the male

Why did you drown? Did you jump to your death, from the bridge high above? Were you there on your own? Or with your true love?

Who sat on their left, with his head on his hands Who was itching to go to some nice foreign lands.

Why did you drown? What is that, which you clasp? A locket? With the love you saw last?

The chance of survival is not lots and lots. Based on a painting by George Frederic Watts.

Why did you drown? Did you have a baby? OR is it still lying Down there, with you the drowned lady?

With the closing of the Gallery for restoration, the schools programme will be continuing as part of ‘A Gallery Without Walls Learning Programme’. Schools will still be able to come to Compton and book a visit to the Watts Chapel and see the Watts Gallery site.

Why did you drown? Were you not wed? Did they say you were rude? Is that what sent you to your watery bed? Why did you drown? Did you sacrifice your self for others like you? Did you suffer like Jesus on the cross? With your arms out stretched? Under the star of hope, is this true?

Their crops had all failed, and they just couldn’t wait For some food to eat, when it is almost too late

by Henry

In conjunction with this we will be offering schools a new programme of outreach sessions, see the Gallery’s website for more information. If you are a teacher and would like to join the Teacher E-bulletin mailing list, please email learning@wattsgallery.org.uk with your name and school details.

by Celeste 35

An Arts & Crafts Enclave in Surrey The Story of Abbotswood Revealed

Have you ever wondered about the link between the marvellous Arts and Crafts houses such as Goddards by Lutyens, Blackwell by Baillie Scott, or Norney Grange by Voysey and the long rows of Jacobethan dwellings we see at the entrances to our towns? A new book, entitled ‘A History of Abbotswood, Guildford’s Most Unusual Estate’, by Michael Drakeford discovers this evolution at the home of the Arts and Crafts Movement, the South East, and in particular Surrey’s county town of Guildford. The beginning of the story is well documented. It was started in the mid-nineteenth century by William Morris and his friends to move away from the Victorian mass produced properties and create buildings and materials that reflected the craftsmanship that was, they believed, in danger of being relegated to a very few properties, if not just to the history books. After 1918 there was a dearth of house building and only when kick started by a government concerned about the lack of properties being built, did a revival come in the early 1920s. By that time the wealth required for grand Arts and Crafts houses had disappeared through increased taxes, and reduced economic circumstances. Added to this was the loss of many men on the battle fields of Europe, and with them their skills. In better earlier times architects at all levels had much admired the skills of the Arts and

Crafts masters such as those mentioned above. Partly working in their shadows they too had created great houses. This book follows the fascinating story of one such architect, Claude Burlingham. The book was prompted by the threat to demolish one of Burlingham’s houses in Abbotswood, an estate in Guildford. Local residents objected, and through a lot of hard work, persuaded English Heritage to give it a listing. The house, Woodways (seen above) was noted as an outstanding example of the Arts and Crafts style. The threat was lifted and the house restored. Investigations revealed that, unusually, virtually all the houses on the estate built between the time the land was purchased from Lord Onslow in 1909 until 1925, were designed by Burlingham. This new book leads the reader through the tale, examining each house on the estate, drawing out the significant design feature that indicate an Arts and Crafts Style house, and provides an insight into the lives of the people who lived there from the very beginning. In 324 pages, with 400 mostly colour illustrations it is a valuable source of information and interest. One not to be missed. Signed copies of ‘A History of Abbotswood, Guildford’s Most Unusual Estate’ by Michael Drakeford, £25, can be bought from Watts Gallery. 01483 810235 www.wattsgallery.org.uk 36

A Gallery Without Walls Watts Gallery Events During Restoration During the restoration of Watts Gallery from October 2008 to late 2010, the Watts Gallery Learning Programme A Gallery Without Walls, will be taking place in local venues across the community. This will include a wide range of family and adult learning events.

Create a Christmas Angel Saturday 13 December 2008 10.30 – 12 noon and 1.30 – 3pm Loseley Fields Children’s Centre

You can book online, via post or at the Information Point during opening hours (Tue-Fr 11-3pm, Sat 11-5pm, Sun 1-5pm). For telephone enquiries please call 01483 813591.

Inspired by the angels on the ceiling of the Watts Chapel, you will be able to make a Christmas Angel using wire and tissue paper. Your angel sculpture could be used as a table decoration or put on to your Christmas tree.

refreshments will be provided or the Cathedral Refectory can provide lunch. Please come and make a day of it! For more information please contact Catherine Warrington, on 01483 547880. Organised by Guildford Cathedral, in conjunction with Watts Gallery

Big Draw Workshops at Guildford Cathedral 28, 29 and 30 October 2008 10am-12 noon Small admission charge, payable on the day. No advance booking. The Cathedral will be open for people of all ages to come and have a go at drawing. This will be a collaborative piece of work, organised by a Sandy Curry, the Watts Gallery Fenton Arts Trust Artist in Residence 2006-7, and the finished work will be on display in the cathedral at the end of the event. No experience necessary! There will also be worksheets and colouring sheets available for children of all ages and tours round the cathedral. Some

You may wish to visit the Chapel before you come to the workshop if you haven’t been there before!

Family Art Workshops £5 per child, accompanying adults free. Children need to be accompanied at all times when at the workshop. For ages 5-10. Priority booking for family friends until the end of October.

Creative Fun with Clay Monday 16 February 2009 10.30 – 12 noon and 1.30 – 3pm Loseley Fields Children’s Centre Inspired by the Compton Pottery Nursery Rhyme Plaques, we will make a clay plaque illustrating your favourite nursery rhyme or story. Then learn how to make a simple pot, which you could also decorate with a story theme. The plaque and the pot will be made in airdrying clay, which you can paint at home.

A Gallery Without Walls Watts Gallery Events During Restoration Friends’ Visits Watts in the City: St. James the Less; St. Paul’s Cathedral and G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint Mon 8 December 2008 9.30am-6pm (approx.) £30 per person Two tickets per Friend and all tickets are non-refundable. In the last Friends’ Visit of 2008 Friends will have the opportunity to see the Watts mosaic The Doom at St. James the Less, Pimlico, and view this exquisite church, completed in 1861, where the interior is a profusion of gilding, brick, tile and marble.

Gallery Collection, the exhibition will cast new light on some familiar and some less familiar works. As always Mark Bills, Curator of Watts Gallery, will accompany the visit to answer questions. It will be necessary to take a packed lunch to eat at St James the Less; there will be facilities for tea and coffee. The day will involve a large amount of walking.

Visits for 2009 Visits for 2009 will include a tour of a Gertrude Jekyll garden with cream tea in June. In September there will be a two-day stay at Farringford, Tennyson’s former home on the Isle of Wight. Anne Vardon Friends Events Co-ordinator

Curator’s Talks

We will then take a tour of St. Paul’s Cathedral which will include Watts’s paintings in the Nave, Time, Death and Judgement and Peace and Goodwill as well as his spandrel designs. Finally we will view the exhibition G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint in the crypt of St. Paul’s. Comprising religious paintings from the Watts

Looking at G. F. Watts: Portraits of the Artist Wed 3 December 2008, 7pm Compton Village Hall £5, including a glass of wine Whether in painting, sculpture or photography, images of G. F. Watts are remarkably revealing. From the early self-portrait at the age of 17 to the photograph on his deathbed, they strongly reflect his state of mind and influences at the time that they were created. This lecture by Mark Bills will consider 38

the life and art of Watts through his portraits and self-portraits. (Rescheduled from August) Watts and Mammon Wed 4 February 2009, 7pm Compton Village Hall £5, including a glass of wine For G. F. Watts one of the curses of his age was ‘Mammonism’. He believed this to be the unspiritual and unwholesome seeking of material wealth for its own sake, which he felt was a destructive force that stifled both the human spirit and the life of a nation. In many of his paintings such as Mammon, For He Had Great Possessions and Can These Bone Live? he dealt with this idea and its impact on the individual and society as a whole. Mark Bills will discuss the subject of Mammon in Watts’s art. An Artist’s Rural Retreat: G. F. Watts and Limnerslease Wed 6 May, 7pm Compton Village Hall £5, including a glass of wine

2009 Watts Symposium

George and Mary Watts first visited Compton in the 1880s to stay with their friends, the Hichens at Monkshatch. In 1890 they commisioned the architect Ernest George to build a home for them nearby that they named Limnerslease. Initially a winter retreat, Watts had a grand studio house, a barn studio and eventually the Watts Gallery just a stone’s throw away. The talk will explore the importance of Limnerslease to Watts.

Watts Lecture Egotism and Altruism: Watts and the Tate Alison Smith, Curator, Tate Wed 25 February 2009, 6.30pm Charterhouse, Godalming £5 Sponsored by the Art Department, Charterhouse G. F. Watts was the only artist to donate works to the Tate Gallery when it was established in 1897. This lecture looks at the Watts bequest in relation to other art legacies, and examines the problem it presented in terms of the conditions it imposed, the on-going relationship between the Tate and the Watts estate, as well as shifts in taste and reputation. See page 8 for full details.

Thur 26 February 2009 Guildhall Art Gallery, London Fri 27 February 2009 St. Paul’s Cathedral £75 two days/£40 one day Conc. £55 two days/£35 one day (Concessions include students, senior citizens, unwaged and Friends of Watts Gallery; Guildhall Art Gallery; St Paul’s Cathedral.) The 2009 Symposium will explore the life and work of G. F. Watts within the context of the Victorian age. The list of speakers includes Professor Sir Christopher Frayling. See page 8 for full details.

Adult Art Class Life Drawing Sat 24 January 2009, 2.30 – 6pm Charterhouse, Godalming £35 Explore life drawing through the eyes of G. F. Watts, with Gez Evans, artist and former Director of Creative Arts at Frensham Heights School. This life drawing day will look at the ways Watts used the human form to create his message and provide the opportunity to develop drawing and observational skills by working directly from a model. Suitable for adults of all abilities and art students aged 16+. Tickets are limited. Easels, paper and charcoal will be provided.

Booking Form

Family Workshops Christmas Angel £5 Sat 13 December, 10.30 Christmas Angel £5 Sat 13 December, 1.30

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Fun with Clay £5 Mon 16 February, 10.30am

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Fun with Clay £5 Mon 16 February, 1.30pm

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Friends Visit £30 Watts in the City Mon 8 December 2008 Curator’s Talks Looking at G. F. Watts £5 Wed 3 December

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Watts and Mammon Wed 4 February

£5

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Artist’s Retreat

£5

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Book all three for just £12

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Watts Lecture 2009 Watts and the Tate Wed 25 February

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Wed 6 May

£5

Watts Symposium £75/£55 ___ ___ 26/27 February 2009 26 February only £40/£35 ___ ___ 27 February only Adult Art Class Life Drawing Sat 24 January

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£40/£35 ___ ___ £35

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Please fill in your personal details and payment instructions over the page.

Booking Form Title

An Artist’s Perspective on Watts Gallery Paul Catherall, Printmaker

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Leading printmaker Paul Catherall has been commisioned to design a linocut of Watts Gallery, capturing it prior to restoration. Andrew Churchill talks to him.

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Postcode Telephone Children’s Name/s and age

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Name of Card Holder Credit Card Number Valid From Issue Number

Exprires End CVN*

* last 3 digits of the number on the signature strip Signature Cheques payable to: Watts Gallery

Please send your booking form to: Events, Watts Gallery, Down Lane, Compton, Surrey GU3 1DQ

Your prints have previously focussed on architectural landmarks in cities. How did you find working in a more rural setting? It was quite a change and a challenge - I’d got used to using straight lines most of the time from my usual choice of mid to late twentieth century architecture, particularly those from the brutalist genre! I really like the Englishness of the setting and it enabled me to incorporate colours inspired by painters like Paul and John Nash and Graham Sutherland. It also allowed for a more integration between natural and man made elements. The foliage at the Gallery seems to be part of the structure and I wanted to reflect that in the print. You are in the exhibition The Art of the Poster - A Century of Design, in fact one of your prints is the cover of the catalogue I believe. Yes, the artwork of Primrose Hill image is displayed along with some preparatory sketches and a previous poster of St Paul’s and Blackfriars Bridge entitled ‘Spring - Four Seasons of London’s Famous Skyline’ has been chosen for the book published by Lund Humphries to coincide with the exhibition. 40

Many people will be familiar with your work on the numerous book jackets you have designed. ‘The Cloudspotter’s Guide’ was a runaway success wasn’t it? It became a really popular book which was a nice surprise to me and also to the publisher I think! It was designed and reproduced sympathetically, which is quite important when dealing with artwork that becomes the main focus of the cover - things like the right paper stock being used can make a big difference. What was it about the Gallery building that first struck you? The first thing that struck was the geometric quality of the triangular windows along with the two front elevations. Though it seemed almost ‘country cottage’ like with

a very English feel enhanced by the front garden and foliage around the building I also saw the ‘tardis’ quality of the gallery that seems so much smaller on the outside than it actually is.

structure. Colours also come as a response to the building that just seem right. It’s hard to explain but certain buildings just seem to go with certain colours. Watts Gallery by Paul Catherall Linocut. Signed edition of 95. 28.5cm x 38cm (11.25in x 15in) £125. www.wattsgallery.org.uk 01483 810235

I wanted to retain the Englishness of the building and setting but also to give it stature and solidity with an almost pattern like representation of the Arts and Crafts features. Do you approach ‘cultural’ buildings differently to say, bridges or financial buildings? Not at all. Every landmark has it’s own unique qualities and you respond to just that really. When sketching and photographing I usually get an idea of the elements I want to concentrate on - those that I feel are the essence of the

The Art of the Poster - A Century of Design, London Transport Museum, 16 Oct – 31 Mar 2009. www.ltmuseum.co.uk www.paulcatherall.com

left Paul Catherall, The Cloudspotter’s Guide top Paul Catherall, Watts Gallery above Paul Catherall, Poster for Transport for London

Christmas at Watts Gallery Gifts for the Art Lover in your Family

This year’s Christmas card depicts Physical Energy by G. F. Watts in Kensington Gardens, painted by Terry McKivragan whose studio is in the old potteries building at Watts Gallery. Terry says “As you walk through the gardens, you see up ahead of you, strategically placed at the junction of five pathways, this dramatic sculpture. One cannot fail to be impressed by the contrast of this portrayal of such dynamic equestrian energy in such a tranquil setting.” To accompany the exhibition G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary the book by Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant is published by Yale University Press. 300 pages, 250 illustrations. pb £20, hb £40

Cast in best quality pewter and available in a matt or a highly polished finish, these paperweights of Physical Energy will look handsome on any desk, mantelpiece or windowsill. £24.95

G. F. Watts: Parables in Paint Religious works from the Watts Gallery Collection

Pack of 10 cards, £5.95

Order on-line at

www.wattsgallery.org.uk or visit the Watts Gallery Information Point and Shop Tue-Fri 11-3pm Sat 11-5pm, Sun 1-5pm

This 24 page catalogue for the exhibition at St. Paul’s Cathedral includes an essay by Hilary Underwood and is fully illustrated. £3.95

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Courses available for beginners in drawing, painting and various crafts. New courses continually added. A full programme of courses will be available on the website from 5 October 2008. w. www.drellagallery.co.uk e. teresa@drellagallery.co.uk t. 01483 239813 m. 07900 887021 119 High Street, Godalming Surrey, GU7 1AQ

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