Mary Seton Watts

Other names: née Mary Seton Fraser-Tytler (also spelt Fraser Tytler)

Born 25 November 1849
Died 6 September 1938

Active: 1870 - 1938

Country of birth: India

Country of death: England

Designer, sculptor, ceramicist, illustrator, painter, business owner

Born in Bombay. She was the daughter of Charles Edward Fraser-Tytler of Balnain and Aldourie, a Scottish gentleman from Inverness-shire who was working for the East India Company when Mary was born. Her mother died soon after giving birth to Mary and so the infant was sent home to Scotland where she was raised by her grandparents. In 1870 Mary began her art training in Dresden, and then entered the National Art Training Schools in 1870. From 1872-3 she studied modelling under Aimé-Jules Dalou at the Slade School of Art.

Mary first met the painter George Frederic Watts in 1870 when he was approaching the height of his career. He became her unofficial tutor and was soon the object of her affections. At first Watts discouraged her interest and Mary threw herself into work for the Home Arts and Industries Association an organisation which aimed to revive traditional rural crafts. She ran classes in clay modelling twice a week in Whitechapel under a scheme set up by the Reverend Samuel Barnett (1844–1913). (He was Vicar of St Jude’s, Whitechapel, where Mary did her teaching, and he later founded the first University Settlement, Toynbee Hall, in Whitechapel.)

By 1886 George Frederic Watts had decided Mary was a suitable match and they were married on 20 November 1886. She continued to play a leading role in the Home Arts and Industries Association and from the 1890s onwards taught pottery to large numbers of local people in the village of Compton where the couple had built a country residence called Limnerslease. Mary went on to establish the commercially successful Potters’ Arts Guild and designed an award-winning range of garden pottery in red or grey frost-proof earthenware with Celtic motifs for Liberty & Co. She also designed carpets and rugs that were made in Donegal for Liberty's (unusually her name was associated with the works breaking the store's usual policy of anonymity). Mary's most ambitious project was the ‘Celtic Romanesque’ Watts Cemetery Chapel at Compton, which she designed and decorated with the help of 70 local villagers between 1895 and 1904. As part of this project she ran Thursday evening ‘Terra Cotta Home Arts’ classes for local villagers from 1895 in order to make the exterior decorations for the chapel.

After George Frederic Watts' death in 1904 she nurtured his reputation and displayed works from his studio at the Watts Gallery in Compton. In 1912 she published an account of Watts' career called the 'Annals of an Artist's Life'.

There are further details of Mary Seton Watts' life and career on the website of the Watts gallery http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk/. The Gallery held an exhibition of Mary's work entitled 'The Making of Mary Seton Watts' between 12 November 2013 and 19 January 2014 and published a catalogue of the same title by Mary McMahon. Among other relevant publications are: Mark Bills, 'Watts Chapel: a guide to the symbols of Mary Watts' arts and crafts masterpiece', 2010 and Veronica Franklin Gould, 'Mary Seton Watts, 1849-1938: unsung heroine of the art nouveau', 1998. This entry includes information from Alison Adburgham, 'Liberty's Autobiography of a shop', 1975, p. 82.

Wealth at death: £56,907 15s. 9d.
Probate date: 23 November 1938

Citing this record

'Mary Seton Watts', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=ann_1387916480, accessed 10 Jun 2023]