G.F. Watts: Purpose

"Margaret Elizabeth Hughes" by G.F. Watts

G.F. Watts had built his new house in Melbury Road, in one respect, on the same plan as that on which Leighton had built his house in Holland Park Road. To obviate any possibility of staying guests there was only one bedroom, besides those for servants. Watts had gone even one step further, since there was also but one sitting room, the rest of the ground floor being occupied by three painting studios and one sculptor's studio. Shortly before the time we became his neighbours, Watts had had to face life from a fresh point of view. Circumstances had occurred which made him more than ever desirous of consecrating the whole of his life to his work. 

The aims and ambitions which had from the first guided his art, had strengthened as his gifts ripened. He repeatedly told us that his sole desire was to give his entire life unremittingly and with single-hearted earnestness to his work - to use his gifts in the cause of raising art to the same level of culture in England as that on which great poetry and great music stand. No less from patriotic than from artistic aspirations did Watts long to see the art of England placed in the first rank among the serious concerns and interests of his country.

He said: 'If I were asked to choose whether I would like to do something good, as the world judges popular art, and receive personally great credit for it, or, as an alternative, to produce something which should rank with the very best, taking a place with the art of Pheidias or Titian, with the highest poetry and the most elevating music, and remain unknown as the perpetrator of the work, I should choose the latter.' Whatever else I did or did not find in Watts during the many years of our friendship, unwavering consistency in aiming at the highest, and unvarying industry in endeavouring to reach it, was the keynote of his art."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "G.F. Watts: Reminiscences," 1906, by Mrs. Russell Barrington.)