Seen in his day as 'the old master in the modern man', George Frederic Watts was the most remarkable British artist of the Victorian era, the first living artist to exhibit his life work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
The centenary of Watts's death is commemorated with a survey of his visionary painting, sculpture and mural designs, confronting issues of human existence, from historical pictures for the Palace of Westminster, stark scenes of social realism, mystical landscapes and mythologies, to transcendental allegories on themes of time and judgement, love and death, chaos and progress.
A scholarly illustrated catalogue edited by his biographer and curator Veronica Franklin Gould, The Vision of G. F. Watts (1817- 1904) OM RA, includes essays by the senior Tate Britain curator Alison Smith on the symbolic language of his cosmic paintings, and Hilary Underwood places his painting in the context of Symbolist art in Britain and Europe. David Stewart of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA, contrasts Watts's socially engaged, didactic paintings with the academic perfection of those by Royal Academy president, Lord Leighton, and Franklin Gould outlines his innovative sculpture.
'The Vision of G.F. Watts' at the Watts Gallery, will re-establish Watts as the influential pioneer of British Symbolism and of the New Sculpture movement.
Accompanies a survey of his visionary works at the Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey, UK (2 July 2 - 31 October 2004)
Coincides with his Symbolist display at Tate Britain August 2004 - July 2005)
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