Protoplasm, Art and Death: The Origin of Life and G. F. Watts by wattsgallery2

Protoplasm, Art and Death: The Origin of Life and G. F. Watts The work of Charles Darwin and other evolutionists, such as Thomas Huxley challenged certain fundamental aspects of Christian doctrine and religious belief. The most prominent debates in the 1860s and 1870s, stemming from work such as Huxley’s on protoplasm, centred on questions regarding the origin of life. On one side were vitalists like Lionel Beale, who believed that a vital entity, such as God, gave life; on the other were mechanists, who argued that there were material explanations for the origin of life, which engaged with theories of spontaneous generation. This debate included discussions on the difference between living and dead cells. Huxley argued that there was only a gradation between life and non-life. He had supposed that upon death living matter reverts to its mineral elements and that these can recombine to make fresh life, implying that death is not an end but part of a continuous cycle of life and death. This had implications for the Christian belief in life after death. In this essay I intend to show that the work by G.F. Watts, including The All Pervading (1887-90, Tate) (Fig.1) and Death Crowning Innocence (1886-7, Tate) (Fig.2), was responding to religious doubt over the origin of life, and subsequent debates on life after death, which arose from these contemporary scientific debates. In 1868, Thomas Huxley claimed that protoplasm was the ‘physical basis of life’.1 In his address, first published in the Fortnightly Review, Huxley argued, ‘that there is some one kind of matter which is common to all living beings, and that their endless diversities are bound together by a physical, as well as an ideal unity.’2 Huxley was referring to protoplasm, the structureless, colourless compound understood by

T.H. Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life (From the Fortnightly Review, for February, 1869) (Yale College, New Haven: The College Courant, 1869), 5. 2 Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 5. 1

theorists of the time to be within a cell. Protoplasm in all organisms was described as containing carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen.3 Huxley argued that all living organisms had a threefold unity of form, faculty and substantial composition. Furthermore, they all feed, grow and reproduce.4 He used the example of clay to demonstrate the unity of all living organisms, for ‘It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay’.5 Therefore, protoplasm was the building blocks of organic life, whether human, animal or plant. He did not see any divine agency in the emergence of life form the chemical constitutes of protoplasm. Huxley’s work on protoplasm was widely studied beyond purely scientific circles, and protoplasm became a household name.6 The other scientific explanation for the origin of life was that protoplasm received life from vital powers. This view combined science with religion by arguing that God gave life to cells and divine will caused the origin of life. Lionel Beale found Huxley’s use of the word protoplasm to be too general and wrote Protoplasm; or, Life, Force, and Matter (1870) to engage with the debate. Beale stated that ‘Every beast, fowl, reptile, worm or polyp that we see is protoplasm. Everything that lives or has lived is protoplasm’ and proposed that living tissues consist of germinal and formed matter. 7 Germinal matter was defined as colourless, structureless and active with the ability to move of its own accord, in any direction. Formed matter was organic matter produced from germinal or living matter.8 Beale argued that ‘In all living beings there exists matter in a peculiar state which we call living…It moves in a manner which

Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 12. Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 6-7. 5 Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 11. 6 A. Desmond, Huxley: The Devil’s Disciple (London: Michael Joseph, 1994), 367. 7 L.S. Beale, Protoplasm; or, Life, Force, and Matter (London: J. Churchill & Sons, 1870), 19. 8 Beale, Protoplasm, 38. 4

cannot be explained by physicsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, which exists in the living portions only and is not apparent in formed matter.9 Beale thus took a vitalist position that was opposed to that taken by mechanists, such as Huxley, it was, Beale said, God, who gave life. Beale wrote Life Theories: Their Influence upon Religious Thought after Protoplasm (1871) in an additional attempt to keep religion relevant to science. He further reiterated the role of divine will in the origin of life:

As all vital power affects the molecules of matter, and makes them take up certain positions, and so arranges them that certain definite combinations shall take place, we may surely conceive the existence of a vital power capable of causing the particles it guides to the so arranged as to form at length complex, and it may be very elaborate structures, preforming the most delicate work and in a most perfect manner. Such arguments, it seems to me, further justify a belief in the operation of a higher agency whose power transcends that of mind.10

Science in the Victorian period had provided a better understanding of the cells within the body and unity of humans with other animals and plants. Debates about the origin of life were closely linked to the articulation of cell theory and discourses about the common building blocks of organic life. Many people considered that these ideas had negative implications for religious belief. The scientific investigations addressed questions, which religion had previously explained, like the origin of life. Despite scientific advancement, the late Victorian period was characterised by an increased belief in the paranormal, supernatural and occult, as well a rising interest in other

Beale, Protoplasm, 89. L.S. Beale, Life Theories: Their Influence upon Religious Thought (London: J & A Churchill, 1871), 97. 10

religions, due to contact with new cultures around the world. Spiritualism, which was a belief in a spirit world, whereby the dead could communicate with the living, also arose at this time. G.F. Watts was a notable artist working in this period and suited to discuss scientific debates on the origin of life. Watts did not attach himself to one individual artistic movement, instead engaged with a variety of modes, in particular allegory and symbolism of transcendent ideas, using idiosyncratic imagery.11 Watts offered a new visual vocabulary for spiritualism in the Victorian period, and sought to give spiritual solace but not by traditional Christian means. Michael Wheeler argues that ‘Many people who visited art galleries in the second half of the nineteenth century were crying out for something broader’.12 Watts’s cultural vagueness therefore made him accessible to a wider audience.13 Watts was not conventionally religious, he believed in ‘an allpervading spirit’,14 and was interested in science, especially astronomy and evolution.15 He disapproved of rigid faith, especially the teaching of eternal punishment, and consequently explored other religious and spiritual movements, which is evident in his work.16 His depictions of the process of creation, for instance, Chaos (1875-82, Tate)

A. Wilton, R. Upstone, ed., The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts, Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910 (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1997), 28. 12 M. Wheeler, ‘The Possibility of Watts: Religious and Spiritualist in Victorian England’ in M. Bills, B. Bryant, G.F. Watts Victorian Visionary, Highlights from the Watts Gallery Collection (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 52. 13 Wheeler, ‘The Possibility of Watts’, 53. 14 J. E. Phythian, George Frederick Watts (London: Grant Richards, 1908), 94. 15 Wilton, Upstone, ed., The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts, 268. 16 Mrs R. Barrington, G.F. Watts, Reminiscences (London: George Allen, 1905), 150151. Mrs Barrington discusses the ‘The strict evangelical teaching he had received when a child had left its indelible stamp on his nature’ and that the formalities of Church did not appeal to Watts, but he did feel that some necessity for religion to keep the morals of the masses in order. 4

(Fig.3), and the representation of the creator of the universe, reflect the context of conflicting beliefs and shifting consensus to scientific discoveries.17 In western art since the medieval period, a common representation of the creator was God as a grey haired old man or father. Watts’s representation of the creator responds to the debates between vitalists and mechanists over the origin of life. The All Pervading (1887-90) and the later Sower of the Systems (1902, Watts Gallery) (Fig.4) depict creators of the universe, yet their faces are unclear, signifying the unknowable origin of life. Sower of the Systems is an almost abstract depiction of what Watts termed the, ‘one great mystery – the Creator’.18 Legs are visible at the bottom of the piece indicting a body. The body is in movement, creating the universe, shown by the sweeping movement of the paint and drapery. The Athenaeum did not think this was Watts’s greatest piece but identified that it was of a ‘mysterious figure’.19 The All Pervading also personifies the mystery of the creator. It shows a figure, described by Mark Bills as a ‘mysterious winged and hooded figure,’ which is looking down upon the universe it holds.20 The shape of the wings is like a shroud, enclosing what it holds inside, equally we could be looking into a womb or a seedpod. The mysterious figure could be a woman birthing the universe offering a materialistic view of the origins of life, because a woman gives life naturally, or equally the unknowable gender recalls the unknowable origin of life. The Christian belief concerning creation was being put into doubt by scientific discourses on the origin of life and the obscured identity of the creator and lack of biblical reference in Sower of the Systems and The All Pervading

Wilton, Upstone, ed., The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts, 35. Wilton, Upstone, ed., The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts, 280. 19 ‘The New Gallery’, The Athenaeum, (2 May, 1903), 569. 20 Bills, Painting for the Nation, G.F. Watts at the Tate (Compton: Watts Gallery, 2011), 33. 18

responds to this as it is unclear who or what is creating life, whether that be vitalist or mechanist theories in the post Darwinian scientific society. Another association suggested by the composition of The All Pervading is that it is cell-like. A figure sits, as if defying gravity, holding the universe on its lap. The wings stand as the cell wall, the universe as the nucleus, the centre of life, while the drapery of the figure recalls protoplasm, it moves in different directions around the body, recalling Beale’s analysis of protoplasm which emphasised that it moves of its own accord in any direction.21 Many of the colours chosen by Watts are life giving colours; earthy, verdant and oceanic, while the drapery is ‘colourless’ like protoplasm. The noticeable cell shape of the central motif, draws parallels with Watts’s work and with scientific discourses on protoplasm as the physical basis of life and the substance that unifies all organisms in the universe. Scientific theories on protoplasm and the origin of life also had implications for Christian belief in life after death. The debates included discussions on the difference between living and dead cells. Huxley argued that there was only a gradation between life and non-life and had supposed that upon death living matter reverts to its mineral elements, with the capacity to recombine to make fresh life, and gave the example of eating mutton or lobster. He wrote,

If digestion were a thing to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, and the matter of life of the crustacean would undergo the same wonderful metamorphosis into humanity. And were I to return to my own place by sea, and undergo shipwreck, the Crustacea might, and probably would, return the compliment, and demonstrate our common nature by turning my protoplasm

Beale, Protoplasm, 38. 6

into living lobster22

The act of consumption of the dead minerals of the previous living animal would transfer them into the consumer, implying that death was not the end but part of a continuous cycle of life and death. Beale repudiated this argument by saying that Huxley was proposing that roast mutton and living sheep are identical, which is untrue.23 To Beale, Huxley’s assertion of the gradation between life and death was preposterous, for surely, if there was only a gradation between life and death the right conditions would bring it back to life, which, he asserted does not happen.24 In addition, he said if Huxley’s example of mutton was correct then it would be ‘less incorrect to speak of such “protoplasms” as the physical basis of death’.25 For Beale, protoplasm signified life (that was only present in the living matter) and that life and death should not become trivialised by science, as there was no gradation between life and death but a much greater chasm. In Victorian society, a Christian belief in heaven and resurrection of the body after death was the norm. The discussions on living and dead cells had implications relating to life after death, just as protoplasm had had on creation. Francis O’Gorman highlights that the Victorian period saw a rise in questions about what happened after death; such questions could no longer be answered confidently.26 Watts’s paintings of death can be seen as symptomatic of the contemporary crisis of belief in life after death. Watts depicts death as a woman, a motherly figure, not a dark grim reaper so common in traditional depictions of death. In Victorian Britain poor sanitary conditions leading

Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 14. Beale, Protoplasm, 28. 24 Beale, Protoplasm, 4. 25 Beale, Protoplasm, 19. 26 F. O’Gorman, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 256. 23

to the prevalence of disease meant that death was common and visible to all. Watts thus provides an opportunity for meditation upon the harsh reality of death, but also to those experiencing religious doubt in an age of scientific discovery. Watts opposed strict dogmatic religion especially any that preached eternal punishment. In many of Wattsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s paintings, he portrays death as a maternal woman. Death Crowning Innocence (1886-7) depicts the angel of death, a woman, with pale, greyish skin cradling a dead child. Her wings frame the picture drawing us into the scene, giving a reminder that death will take the young. To the viewer the painting does either not incite fear of death in the viewer, instead comfort, for the dead child is being cared for by death as if it is the mother, or this is a haunting image of an uncertain afterlife.27 The mother is the ultimate symbol of the creation of life, yet Watts uses it as a symbol for death, emphasising the paradox of life and death being discussed not only in scientific texts but also from contact with new religions. The cycle of life and death is very similar to the belief of life after death in other religions, especially eastern, such as, Buddhism. Watts took a personal interest in Buddhism, which taught a cycle of life and rebirth. The doubt in Christian doctrine did not come from science alone, also from further contact with other religions.28 Death Crowning Innocence has a similar composition, form and colour to The All Pervading. They have the same life giving colour tones, of blue, brown, green and grey. The wings of both figures frame the scene, this time Deathâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s colourless skin resembling protoplasm holding the nucleus of life; the child. The mystery of the figure in The All Pervading is unnerving and the feet coming out from the drapery look skeletal. The similarity of both paintings aligns creation and death, this manoeuvre has

27 28

Bills, Painting for the Nation, 30. Bills, Bryant, G.F. Watts Victorian Visionary, 56. 8

parallels to Huxley’s arguments about protoplasm. Huxley stated that ‘living protoplasm not only ultimately dies and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless constituents, but is always dying, and, strange as the paradox may sound, could not live unless it died’.29 Death depicted as a woman, with the capacity to give life, in Death Crowning Innocence has some parallels in Huxley’s proposal that life and death is a cycle. Huxley warned that in accepting that protoplasm was the physical basis of life ‘you are placing your feet on the first rung of a ladder which, in most people’s estimation, is the reverse of Jacob’s and leads to the antipodes of heaven’.30 Huxley was acknowledging that many of his critics would view his position as irreligious and it did cause intense debate. The Victorian belief in heaven was being thrown into question by scientific texts on life, such as his. The grand Time, Death and Judgement (1900, Tate) (Fig.5) is another of Watts’s paintings that depicts death as a woman. Watts paints time, not as an old man, but as a young blind man, conveying the idea that it is humanity that ages not time. In his painting judgement is striding forward for justice and death is shown as a woman. Time and Death hold hands, asserting that Death is Time’s inevitable partner, recalling Huxley’s cycle of life and death. Her face looks melancholic and her flesh is a sickly grey tone in comparison to the others, signalling death. The drapery she wears is stiff and colourless like stone, indicating lack of life, whilst in comparison, drapery depicted by Watts’s friend Frederick Leighton, is an agent for movement and life. Within the folds of the drapery of Death flowers are held, symbolising the indiscriminate picking of the life she takes. Protoplasm in the late nineteenth century was also, as Robert Michael Brain notes, a ‘pulsatile medium capable of storing manifold temporalities

29 30

Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 13. Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 17. 9

within it’.31 Like protoplasm, within the folds of Death’s drapery holds life, which will die, just as protoplasm does, reminding us of the transience of life. Flowers were components of funeral ceremonies and were routinely placed upon a grave. Flowers were symbols of both life and death, Watts’s inclusion of them here is suggestive of the cycle life and death, which Huxley proposed. A painting that encompasses the themes of the origin of life and the cycle of life and death is Watts’s She shall be called woman (1875-92, Tate) (Fig.6). This was originally called The Newly Created Eve and part of a three-part series of the creation, temptation and redemption of Eve. She shall be called woman shows Eve being created as she rises from the earth in a whirl of clouds, birds and flowers and atoms of light and colour. Although a biblical topic, this has parallels to a mechanist view of creation, as she emerges from undifferentiated matter, as well as vitalist. It is unclear whether she is being created or dissipating, recalling Huxley’s argument of the reversibility of our elements upon death. The fine line between life and death is evident in this work because on the left side the flowers are in full bloom with white birds, whereas on the right it is darker and the birds are black with no flowers. One side thus recalls life and the other decay, yet the clouds shroud her as if in a circular movement, like a cycle. There is a sense of an inversion of creation and destruction in this piece. The painting can also be seen to engage with the spontaneous generation discourse on the origin of life. Huxley noted a beneficial condition paradoxically for life to be brought about originally in protoplasm, was the pre-existence of life.32 His assertion of the physical

R. M. Brain, The Pulse of Modernism: Physiological Aesthetics in Fin-de-Sicle Europe (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015), 38. 32 G.L. Geison, ‘The Protoplasmic Theory of Life and the Vitalist-Mechanist Debate’, Isis, 60, no. 3, (1969), 282. 10

pre-existence of life positioned Huxley with scientific discourses on spontaneous generation. Spontaneous generation had two theories. Firstly, abiogenesis; the theory that living organisms could be produced from inorganic matter. Secondly, heterogenesis; the generation of living organisms from organic matter.33 Abiogenesis was what concerned the discourses on the origin of life, for as John Farley argues, ‘for any evolutionary theory resting on natural causes logically demands an abiogenetic origins of life’.34 Scientists such as Henry Bastian and Alfred Wallace believed that abiogenesis had been proven, whereas Huxley, Darwin and John Tyndall avoided confirming their attitude towards this theory. Bastian in his Beginnings of life (1872) attempted through experiments and observations to prove the existence of spontaneous generation. He begins by stating that the occurrence of spontaneous generation in living matter ‘is no argument against the probability that such matter, like crystalline matter, also come into being by an independent elemental mode of origin’.35 The existence of spontaneous generation was thought by some to be crucial to the validity of evolution. Herbert Spencer was an evolutionist but did not accept spontaneous generation, maintaining that evolution required ancestors and spontaneous generation did not.36 In 1868, Huxley announced his discovery of bathybius haeckelii, a substance found at the bottom of the ocean, suggesting that spontaneous generation had occurred in the past in the sea, but was not necessarily occurring anymore. By 1875 his analysis of bathybius

J. Farley, ‘The Spontaneous Generation Controversy (1859-1880): British and German Reactions to the Problem of Abiogenesis’, Journal of the History of Biology, 5, no. 2, (1972), 285. 34 Farley, ‘The Spontaneous Generation Controversy’, 286. 35 H.C. Bastian, The Beginnings of Life: being some account of the nature, modes of origin and transformations of lower organisms, Vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., 1872), ix. 36 Bastian, The Beginnings of Life, 300-301. 33

was found to be faulty and his findings regarding protoplasm had been disproved.37 The present-day possibility of spontaneous generation, by 1880, had been dismissed, due to the discovery of heat-resistant bacterial spores and lack of evidence.38 The science of spontaneous generation can be seen to relate to She shall be called woman because Eve is coming from the earth, with a whirl of matter. In the biblical story, God created Eve from Adam’s rib, yet there is no reference to that in the painting, Watts is offering an alternative version which does not preclude the idea that she could have been spontaneously given life through abiogenesis. Biblically, Eve is the first woman, thus the ultimate mother of humanity and life and thus primal in many ways, recalling Gustav Mann’s formulation for protoplasm: ‘the mother-substance’. 39 Spontaneous generation also relates to the cycle of life and death in Huxley’s work, because life is coming from lifeless matter. The clouds around her appear to be forming her, symptomatic of the elements that, according to Huxley, protoplasm resolves into upon death. Her face is in shadow and it is her body where the light comes from, and the doves, usually shown in the air are beneath her, supporting that the body holds life, namely protoplasm, and that she is being created from natural components, rather than divine. There is no empty space in She shall be called woman, each aspect of the canvas is covered by her creation. The clouds that whirl around her are characteristic of Huxley’s observation ‘that the existence of the matter of life depends on the preexistence of certain compounds, namely, carbonic acid, water, and ammonia’.40 Those

J. E. Strick, Sparks of Life, Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation (London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 21. 38 Farley, ‘The Spontaneous Generation Controversy’, 303. 39 G. Mann, Protoplasm: its definition, chemistry and structure (Oxford: The Holywell Press, 1906), 3. 40 Huxley, On the Physical Basis of Life, 15. 12

elements could also be the reverted minerals resulting from death. If Huxley’s comments on the death of cells were correct then our elements would be occupying all space, like the ether was thought to of.41 It is therefore understandable why spiritualism became prevalent in the latter half of the nineteenth century, as there is a greater link between life and death. Spiritualism in the Victorian period held that there was a spirit world that could be contacted through mediums and séances. Watts was interested in spiritualism and his wife Mary made several comments on her husband’s relationship with the spiritual. She said, ‘He saw that matter and spirit, being bound together, must work together sanely and equally’.42 She remembered after Tennyson’s death that his voice continued to speak to Watts and that he found an ‘all-pervading sense of the spiritual’.43 Watts’s engagement with spiritualism is arguably present in She shall be called woman. The clouds around Eve’s upward looking face resemble faces, perhaps those of spirits (Fig.7.). Despite it being titled She shall be called woman there is no definitive visual indication that the figure is female. The hands of the figure are well defined, but the face and chest is not, the genitalia are also shrouded alluding to a deliberate gender confusion. The unclear gender yet strong spiritual elements, could be Watts’s engagement with the associations historians, such as Alex Owen, have since made between spiritualism and the subversion of femininity.44 The disarranged matter and non-biblical imagery in She shall be called woman, despite its adoption of a religious topic, is comparable to some of the language Huxley

Brain, The Pulse of Modernism, 52. M.S. Watts., George Frederic Watts, Volume III: His Writings (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912), 224. 43 M.S. Watts., George Frederic Watts, 210. 44 A. Owen, The Darkened Room, Women, Power, and Spiritualism in Late Nineteenth Century England (London: Virago Press, 1989), 202. 42

uses in On the Physical Basis of Life (1869). He would use words like ‘transubstantiate’ despite writing in a materialistic manner, arguing a mechanist position. James Paradis argued that Huxley’s reference to transubstantiation emphasised his own agnosticism.45 This has parallels to the materialistic language adopted by spiritualism such as ‘spirit matter’ and could also relate to Watts’s own religious disposition.46 This essay has attempted to show that Watts’s paintings on both the origin of life and death were a response to the wider environment in which he was working. Watts’s art was addressing spiritualism and the shifting consensus on religious beliefs due to scientific discourses on the origin of life. Victorian religious beliefs had been called into question by contemporary science, especially evolution. In Watts’s work the creator, including the figure in The All Pervading, has no face, alluding to the mystery of who or what created life. Whether that being from divine or material sources, which addressed the contemporary mechanist and vitalist scientific debates on the origin of life surrounding protoplasm. Within the scientific discourses on protoplasm, Huxley and Beale discussed the difference between dead and living cells. Huxley argued that there was a gradation and reversibility between living and dead cells, whereas Beale emphasised the difference between life and matter. If the body was to revert to its elements upon death, as Huxley supposed, then the belief in resurrection of the body was debatable. Watts’s portrayal of death also used non-religious and non-traditional imagery. He produced imagery indicating that death will come for all, irrespective of age, class or gender, and he shows death as a woman, as if a mother. The association of death with a mother speaks to the scientific discourse from Huxley that death is not a stop but part of a continuous cycle of life and death. Darwin, Huxley and others had

J.G. Paradis, ‘Satire and Science in Victorian Culture’ in B. Lightman, ed., Victorian Science in Context (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 167. 46 Owen, The Darkened Room, xi. 45

taken away previous certainty about God, life, time, space and death, which Watts responded to whilst still remaining spiritual in his art. He provided a new spiritual visual vocabulary for Victorian doubt, responding to the latter nineteenth century struggle to reconcile science and religion and the dichotomy between the spiritual and material.

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Watts, M.S., George Frederic Watts, Volume I: The Annals of an Artist’s Life (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912) Watts, M.S., George Frederic Watts, Volume II: The Annals of an Artist’s Life (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912) Watts, M.S., George Frederic Watts, Volume III: His Writings (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912) West, W.K., George Frederick Watts (London: George Newnes Ltd., 1905) White, P., Thomas Huxley, Making the “Man of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Wilton, A., Upstone, R. ed., The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones & Watts, Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910 (London: Tate Gallery Publishing, 1997) Wood, C., Victorian Painting (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999)

Journal Articles Farley, J., ‘The Spontaneous Generation Controversy (1859-1880): British and German Reactions to the Problem of Abiogenesis’, Journal of the History of Biology, 5, no. 2, (1972), 285-319 Geison, G.L., ‘The Protoplasmic Theory of Life and the Vitalist-Mechanist Debate’, Isis, 60, no. 3, (1969), 272-292 Gould, G.M., ‘Immortality’, The Monist, 1, no. 3, (1891), 372-39 Graham, G.L., ‘George Frederick Watts, England's Painter of Eternal Truth’, Brush and Pencil, 14, no. 4 (1904), 263-276, 281-289, 291-293 Minot, C.S., ‘The Microscopical Study of Living Matter, The North American Review, 162, no. 474, (1896), 612-620 Parnes, O., ‘The Envisioning of Cells’, Science in Context, 13, no. 1, (2000), 71-92 Rehbock, P.F., ‘Huxley, Haeckel and the Oceanographers: The Case of Bathybius haeckelii’, Isis, 66, no. 4, (1975), 504-533 Wagner, V.L., ‘Geological Time in Nineteenth Century Landscape Painting’, Winterthur Portfolio, 24, no.2/3, (1989), 153-163 Worboys, M., ‘Practice and the Science of Medicine in the Nineteenth Century’, Isis, 102, no.1, (2011), 109-115

Newspapers Sidgwick, H., ‘Life Theories and their Influence on Religious Thoughts’ The Academy (October, 1871), 481. ‘Protoplasm; Or, Life, Force, and Matter’ The Athenaeum (26 February, 1870), 285287. ‘The New Gallery’, The Athenaeum, (2 May, 1903), 569. Bayliss, W., ‘George Frederick Watts: The Painter of Love and Life’, Good Words, (December, 1899), 229-235. Spielmann, M. H., ‘Mr. G. F. Watts: His Art and His Mission’, The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review, (January, 1897), 161-172.

Online Bryant, B. C, ‘Watts, George Frederic (1817–1904)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2007 (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/36781, accessed 24 December 2016) Fowle, F., ‘She shall be a woman’, Tate, November 2000 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-she-shall-be-called-woman-n01642, accessed 23 December 2016) Gallery Label, ‘Chaos’, Tate, July 2010 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/wattschaos-n01647, accessed, 23 December 2016) Gallery Label, ‘Love and Death’, Tate, September 2004 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-love-and-death-n01645, accessed 22 December 2016) Gallery Label, ‘The Court of Death’, Tate, September 2004(http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-the-court-of-death-n01894, accessed 22 December 2016) Grant, S., ‘G.F. Watts: symbolist and star-gazer’, Tate, 1 May 2011 (http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/gf-watts-symbolist-and-star-gazer, accessed 23 December 2016) Virag, R., ‘Death Crowning Innocence’, Tate, May 2001 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-death-crowning-innocence-n01635, accessed 22 December 2016) Virag, R., ‘Love, Death and Judgement’, Tate, July 2001 (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-time-death-and-judgement-n01693, accessed 22 December 2016)

Illustration List Figure 1: George F. Watts, The All Pervading (1887-90), oil on canvas, 213.5 x 112cm, Tate, London. (Photo: Tate website) Figure 2: George F. Watts, Death Crowning Innocence (1886-7), oil on canvas, 128.3 x 80cm, Tate, London. (Photo: Tate website) Figure 3: George F. Watts, Chaos (1875-82), oil on canvas, 106.7 x 304.8cm, Tate, London. (Photo: Tate website) Figure: 4: George F. Watts, Sower of the Systems (1902), oil on canvas, 122.6 x 91.4 cm, Watts Gallery, Compton. (Photo: Tate website) Figure 5: George F. Watts, Time, Death and Judgement (1900), oil on canvas, 234.3 x 167.6cm, Tate, London. (Photo: Tate website) Figure 6: George F. Watts, She shall be called woman (1875-92), oil on canvas, 257.8 x 116.8 cm, Tate, London. (Photo: Tate website) Figure 7: George F. Watts, She shall be called woman (1875-92), oil on canvas, 257.8 x 116.8 cm, Tate, London. (detail)

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