George Frederic Watts RA

Born 23 February 1817
Died 1 July 1904

Active: 1835 - 1904

Country of birth and death: England

Painter, sculptor, engraver

Born in London. He was the son of George Watts (1775–1845), pianoforte maker and tuner. In 1827 Watts entered the studio of the sculptor William Behnes, who was a family friend and whose father was also a pianoforte maker. Watts took a break from formal training and earned money making portraits in coloured chalks and pencils and then entered the Royal Academy Schools on 30 April 1835. After completing his studies, Watts went on to establish an extraordinarily successful practice as a painter of portraits, murals and pictures he called ‘symbolical’ (i.e. poetic, non-narrative works). He married the actress Ellen Terry (1847–1928) when she was a week short of her seventeenth birthday in 1864. The marriage lasted less than a year, after which she returned to the stage. Watts' second marriage, to the artist Mary Seton Fraser-Tytler, took place over twenty years later.

Sculpture played an increasing role in Watts' practice from the 1860s both as an aid to composition and as an independent art form. Among the major works he produced were some tomb monuments: Thomas Cholmondely Owen, Condover church, Shropshire (1867); the Bishop of Lichfield, Lichfield Cathedral (1869); and William Kerr, eighth marquess of Lothian, Blickling church, Norfolk (1870). Watts also made several full length statues, including a seated statue of the first Lord Holland for Holland Park on which he collaborated with Joseph Edgar Boehm and a statue of Tennyson for Lincoln (1898-1903). His marble bust of Clytie was widely acclaimed and particularly influential when it was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868 and later at the Guildhall. Watts transformed his equestrian figure of Hugh Lupus (1870-84), originally for the marquess of Westminster, into his best-known sculpture, 'Physical Energy'. A version of this formed part of the memorial to Cecil Rhodes in South Africa. Watts was working on the gesso model of 'Physical Energy' at his London studio in June 1904 when he developed his final illness. He died on 1 July.

From the 1880s Watts had been internationally successful. Indeed he was so well known that two days after his death his career was the focus of the sermon in St Paul's Cathedral. Watts' posthumous reputation continued to flourish in the decade after his death, aided by a series of memorial exhibitions and publications. Among these last was the three-volume 'George Frederic Watts: the annals of an artist's life' published by his wife, Mary Seton Watts in 1912.

Wealth at death: £87,179 16s. 5d.
Probate resworn
Probate date: 2 June 1905

Citing this record

'George Frederic Watts RA', 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=msib2_1203976025, accessed 26 Mar 2023]