Page 50 - Studio International - March 1974

UK Reviews the RA, in 1837. If this was a picture genres, his belief (which may be true, criterion of felt experience more
with a moral (as Chris Mullen's but is still disastrous to those who act broadly considered. Consider, again
G. F. Watts at the Whitechapel Art catalogue note suggests), it accordingly), that there is always a from the Whitechapel exhibition, one
Gallery, 24 January —3 March was, to adopt the Victorian Watts's prototype in the past. He was, and of Watts's most justly famous
Watts, who twice refused a baronetcy, values, a moral compromised by its some things in the exhibition showed pictures. Love and Death again
but accepted one of the first OMs, virtuosity. Here too were versions of it, a sensitive landscape painter when offers us a pair of personifications.
who was one of the grandest GOMs The Sower of the Systems, Endymion, he felt like it. But to what end paint But, leaving aside the masterly, rather
of the late nineteenth century, who and Progress, all from his last years. landscapes ? He was probably the Burne-Jonesian design, the simple
stood for all that was best in The first of these was inspired, so the best English portraitist after Lawrence power of gesture here shows how
Victorian idealism, as well as, and story goes, in a manner canonically — some would say after Reynolds — Watts was able, at his best, to
ipso facto, much that may now seem modernistic —'by the patterns made but he was not content with that, he translate common experience into
absurd and venally (because by a night-light on the ceiling above.' had to ennoble the genre and conceive symbolic experience. The didactic
unconsciously) hypocritical, Watts It represents, nevertheless, the Grand a 'Gallery of Great Men'. And then painter, whose preferred public was
has undoubtedly survived. There is Manner shorn of the grand manner, there was the 'Painting of Ideas'. As I of East-enders, here produced an
something irresistibly English and, Michelangelesque ambitions in the suggested, we have no claim to feel anti-evangelical tract which is also
plus ca change, quite contemporary, in language not of proto-abstraction or superior to Watts, we who believe in a work of art, and which is
this strength disguised as weakness of symbolist musical analogy (fond painting without ideas, or ideas accessible to anyone who inhabits a
(or it is weakness disguised as though he was of such notions), but without painting — or even in human frame. The intention is, like
strength ?). If only it would not be of the late Titian. But where, as in Significant Form. Nevertheless one Van Gogh's, to 'console'. If one
assumed that one was attempting a Endymion, Watts is not so earnestly does feel compelled to object to this considers Watts patronizing, 'out of
parody, one really would like to trying to clothe the ineffable in the vision of Progress as a rider on a touch', one is I think only
write of Watts in the reverential tones impalpable, that same basic white horse, presented like an acknowledging his failures, ignoring
adopted by his early biographers. He combination really does come off. In Assumption of the Virgin ; and to his successes. The moral philosophy
inspires both affection and hero- their correspondence of the sixties Physical Energy which represents a (which underlies, and will outlive the
worship, he was a cultural hero, a Ruskin had lectured Watts, putting similar concept, not just because political philosophy) of naturalism
'glory of the British school', and he his expertise before his dogmatics, on pictorially, sculpturally, they are is no less, but also no more
stood for appropriate moral values. the minutiae of Titian's technique. conceived in conventional representative of the nineteenth
But, you may object, such a No doubt this discussion had been Renaissance terms, but because he century than are Watts's elevated,
panegyric, seriously intended, would Arnoldian ideals; it would be absurd
be inane; if not because these moral to take an exclusive, or partisan,
values are so dated, then because his approach, to moralize upon morality.
extraordinary muddle about what Love and Death was a success, it
painting was, and what it could do too is a memorable image, like
or rather how it could do it, is now so Endymion, and among less good
apparent. 'He shrinks from all display pictures, like Hope, like The
of manual dexterity' wrote Julia Minotaur; and this, for a didactic
Cartwright in 1896. Watts does seem painter, already counts for a lot. But
to have felt, though his art sometimes even so its felt experience is more that
belies it, that such priggishness was a of a master than of a man ; it is the
necessary concomitant of his view work of a professional who has a
that 'art may yet speak ... demanding language and knows how to use it in
noble aspirations, condemning in the the service of an idea. As such it is in
most trenchant manner prevalent the best tradition of figure painting
vices ...', and even more, that it was but, despite the personal
the inevitable corollary of his ambition circumstances surrounding its
to paint, in a scheme of frescoes such inception, it tells us little of Watts
as once alarmed the directors of the himself. There is a sense, of course, in
London and North Western Railway, which his reticence, his modesty and
or in a series of oils, a World View, a his ambition are all exemplified in the
Progress of Cosmos, a House of Life. very idiom in which he chose to work.
But, are his moral values so dated ? But in one of the pictures at the
Allowing full scope to our own Whitechapel one seems to get a
powers of self-congratulation (not closer glimpse of his sensibility and
to say priggishness), must the best his character. This is the little
(our humanitarianism) exclude the landscape Evening of 1864, also
G. F. Watts Evening 1864. Oil on panel, 33 x 37 in.
merely better ? And again, is it not our called All the Air a Solemn Stillness
own priggishness, or at least our wish Holds (a typical cultural crutch), also
to be engage, which has turned us initiated by Watts, not Ruskin, but it was always putting new wine in old called (by Ruskin) Haystacks and
against Roger Fry and Clive Bell, would be nice to think that Ruskin had bottles. If Physical Energy was Colleone. The haystacks were near
against plastic values and significant in some way helped in the frankly called Cecil Rhodes (or his home, and Colleone, this
form ? Can we then, with any production of a picture in which General Gordon, or Peter the Great mediaeval knight, was Watts
consistency, afford to mock an artist painterly and thematic values are for that matter) one would feel less himself, or rather 'Signor' as he
most of whose weaknesses are in the really united and in which neither is disappointed. As it is, one is left with allowed himself to be called. It is a
end reducible to the old bugbear of sacrificed to the other. No doubt the impression that his imagination lyrically felt picture, in the best sense
the 'literary' ? Humility becomes us, Ruskin would have objected to this just didn't work. Pissarro's suburban a charming work of art, and it would
who don't know half as much about light more golden (now, at least) than railways can't propose a comparison be so Colleone or no Colleone. But it
painting as Watts let himself forget. silvery, as he had earlier pointed out between progress and the personified seems to symbolize, even if intended
But still, this begs the question. to the painter that forget-me-nots do sluggard ; they may not even be better as one of his little jokes, the way in
What kind of a painter was Watts ? not grow on graves, however much paintings simply as such. But they are which he could not come to terms
The exhibition at the Whitechapel, the literary imagination might wish progressive, where Watts can only with himself, or his art, or Ellen Terry,
though inevitably neither that they did. But Endymion is a good talk about progress. For him, at least (whom he married, aged 16, that
comprehensive, nor even quite picture, and a memorable image. in his art, it remained a concept rather same year for all the wrong reasons
representative, brought together Progress is also a Titianesque than a vision or an experience. and from whom he was separated the
enough of Watts's work for one to be painting, but here even more in If there is any kind of norm next). In fact, the nineteenth century
able to test the view expressed by concept than in technique. It is an hesitantly implied in these remarks, was too much for Watts, who lived
Ronald Chapman in 1945, and altar-piece dedicated to nineteenth- however, it is surely not so simple as through most of it, not because it was
commanding consensus since then, century values, and as such certainly any comparison between Watts and a the nineteenth century so much as
that 'It was not his gifts but his exemplifies one of Watts's most Pissarro might suggest. It is not just because it was now. Found Drowned,
ambition which was sadly to betray fundamental traits— his cultural a question of naturalism and modern Under a Dry Arch, two of his
him'. Here was The Wounded Heron, conventionality, his continuing life as against idealism and the grand handful of 'social realist' works were
one of Watts's first submissions to adherence to the old hierarchy of the manner. It is, if anywhere, in the already by 1 864 fifteen years behind