G.F. Watts: Upon His Death

"Emily Tennyson, Wife of Lord Alfred Tennyson"
by G.F. Watts

"Upon the death of G.F. Watts on July 1, 1904, recognition was generous. In the newspapers the tributes to him were many, and critical words were absent. To the private service which took place in the studio at Little Holland House, on the Sunday evening, when he lay there for the last time, the Archbishop of Canterbury came to officiate, and on July 7 a memorial service was held at St. Paul's, where a great concourse of friends and strangers gathered to pay a reverent farewell. During the week the casket lay in the chapel at Compton, heaped about with signs of love and reverence, and once a day the bell upon which he had had inscribed 'Be my voice neither feared nor forgotten' was tolled. On Friday July 8 his ashes were laid in the Compton graveyard. All was in harmony, nature serenely radiant, and such lovely voices as he would have liked to hear sang words of praise and farewell, while just beyond the labourers were at work ploughing fresh furrows for the harvest of another year.

As far as was possible all his expressed wishes were, and are still being carried out. The collection of his pictures in his private gallery remains intact, and has been much augmented, and also the necessary additions to this gallery have been made. Although it was never at any time his intention to bequeath to the nation work that was not included in the class he called 'ethical reflections,' as to do this on the ground of artistic merit would, he often maintained, be great presumption on his part, there were pictures for which he had mentioned certain destinations. 

Not long after his death the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Edward Poynter, took the initial step to form a committee to consider a public memorial for Watts. However, at or before a preliminary meeting, a letter was shown to Sir Edward Poynter, which had been written by Watts before his death, confiding to him the strong personal objection he had to this idea. Only when his reiterated desires which had been expressed to his wife on this subject were added, was the matter finally abandoned. His friends thus regarded his great wish, that only after centuries of critical opinion had been passed upon his work should such a national distinction be bestowed. He used to say that only then, all bias of friendship on the one hand, and on the other all feeling of obligation to subscribe would have been removed by time."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "George Frederic Watts" by Mary S. Watts.)