Watts (1817-1904) | Page 5

pursuit
of a phantom maiden; and before long there was from his brush the
pictured story of a lost love, "Orpheus and Eurydice," one of the
saddest of all myths, but, one feels, no old myth to him.
By a more careful analysis of the artist's work we hope to learn the
teaching Watts set himself to give, and to ascertain the means that he
adopted; but one point needs to be made clear at this stage, namely, that
although Watts was a great teacher, yet he was not a revolutionary. The
ideals he held up were not new or strange, but old, well-tried, one
might almost say conventional. They represent the ideals which, in the
friction and turmoil of ages, have emerged as definite, clear, final. They
are not disputed or dubious notions, but accepted truisms forgotten and
neglected, waiting for the day when men shall live by them.
Furthermore, Watts was not in any sense a mystic--neither personally
or as an artist. "The Dweller in the Innermost" is not the transcendental
self known to a few rare souls, but is merely conscience, known to all.
The biblical paintings have no secret meaning assigned to them. The
inhabitants of Eden, the hero of the Deluge, the Hebrew patriarchs,
Samson and Satan--all these are the familiar figures of the evangelical's
Bible. "Eve Repentant" is the woman Eve, the mother of the race;
"Jacob and Esau" are the brothers come to reconciliation; "Jonah" is the
prophet denouncing the Nineveh of his day and the Babylon of this.
The teaching--and there is teaching in every one of them--is plain and
ethical. So also, with the Greek myths; they teach plainly--they hold no
esoteric interpretations. Watts is no Neo-Platonist weaving mystical
doctrines from the ancient hero tales; he is rather a stoic, a moralist, a
teacher of earthly things.
But we must be careful to guard against the impression of Watts as a
lofty philosopher consciously issuing proclamations by means of his art.
Really he was not aware of being a philosopher at all; he was simply an
artist, an exquisitely delicate and sensitive medium, who, when once
before his canvas, suddenly filled with his idea, was compelled to say
his word. If there be any synthesis about his finished work--and no one
can deny this--it was not because Watts gave days and nights and years
to "thinking things out." His paintings are, as he used to call them,
"anthems," brought forth by the intuitive man, the musician. This was

the fundamental Watts. Whatever unity there be, is due rather to unity
of inspiration than to strength or definiteness of character and
accomplishment, and this was sometimes referred to by Watts as a
golden thread passing through his life--a thread of good
intention--which he felt would guide him through the labyrinth of
distractions, mistakes, irritations, ill health, and failures.
One of the striking incidents in the life of Watts was his offer to
decorate Euston Railway Station with frescoes entitled "The Progress
of Cosmos." "Chaos" we have in the Tate Gallery, full of
suggestiveness and interest. We see a deep blue sky above the distant
mountains, gloriously calm and everlasting; in the middle distance to
the left is a nebulous haze of light, while in the foreground the rocks are
bursting open and the flames rush through. Figures of men, possessed
by the energy and agony of creation, are seen wrestling with the
elements of fire and earth. One of these figures, having done his work,
floats away from the glow of the fire across the transparent water, while
others of his creative family have quite passed the struggling stage of
movement and are reclining permanent and gigantic to the right of the
picture. The same idea is repeated in the chain of draped women who
are emerging from the watery deep; at first they are swept along in
isolation, then they fly in closer company, next they dance and finally
walk in orderly procession. But Chaos, for all this, is a unity; of all
material forms it is the most ancient form; Cosmos however is the
long-drawn tale beginning with the day when "The Spirit of God
brooded on the face of the waters." Cosmos might have been Watts'
synthetic pictorial philosophy; Herbert Spencer with his pen, and he
with his brush, as it were, should labour side by side. But this was not
to be; the Directors of the North-Western Railway declined the artist's
generous offer, and he had to get his "Cosmos" painted by degrees. On
the whole, perhaps, we should be thankful that the railway company
liberated Watts from this self-imposed task. We remember that Dante
in his exile set out to write "Il Convivio," a Banquet of so many courses
that one might tremble at the prospect of sitting