Victorian symbolism, portrait and moral allegory

Meet George Frederic Watts, Victorian painter and sculptor nicknamed the "English Michelangelo", author of meditative allegories on hope, love, death, time and the human condition.

George Frederic Watts was born in London in 1817 into the modest family of a piano manufacturer. Fragile in health and largely self-taught, he copied ancient marbles at a very young age and briefly attended the Royal Academy schools. A victory in the competition to decorate the new Palace of Westminster allowed him to travel to Italy between 1843 and 1847. In Florence, Rome and Venice, he studied Michelangelo, Titian and the great wall cycles of the Renaissance. This monumental ambition will remain at the heart of his work, even when he paints a canvas of modest dimensions. Watts wishes to produce a "house of life", a vast set of images capable of translating moral forces and spirituals of existence. Hope shows a blindfolded figure leaning over a lyre of which only one string remains intact; Love and Death contrasts the fragility of love with the inevitable advance of a veiled figure; The Minotaur transforms myth into a dark denunciation of brutality and exploitation. Ariane, also active in this collection, places mythological abandonment in a sensual and meditative presence. Watts is also a major portraitist. He represents writers, politicians, artists and reformers with the idea of constituting a national "hall of fame", less attentive to the rank than to the inner energy of the model. Elected to the Royal Academy in 1867, he refused a barony, accepted the Order of Merit in 1902 and offered important ensembles to the nation. With his second wife Mary Seton Watts, he moved to Limnerslease, Surrey, near the gallery dedicated to his work. He died in 1904, a few months after the opening of this pioneering museum. He died in 1904, a few months after the opening of this pioneering museum. The "George Frederic Watts" selection notably compares Ariane and The Minotaur. His reading favors details.

Watts treats allegory as a portrait of humanity: a gesture, a veil or a rope is enough to make an entire moral idea visible.