Watts (1817-1904) | Page 7

pushing the
limits of our interests. The result of competition can only be
conflict--war, unless some other outlet can be found. Commerce will
not supply this; its very activity, which is its health and life, will
produce the ambition, envy, and jarring interests that will be fatal to
peace.... The principle, Movement, must have its outlet, its safety valve.
This has always been war.... The goddess Trade, the modern Pandora,

has in her box all the evils that afflict mankind.... How can Commerce,
as understood by the principles of trade, abolish war?"
"The simple principles of right and wrong are easily defined," and
perhaps easily painted; "but the complexity of human affairs and
legitimate interests, conducing to the activity demanded by the great
law, Movement, makes some elasticity necessary, even where there is
the most honest desire to be just."
Thus, from his own words, we see how the painter transcends the
politician; he is a stimulator, he gives hints, not instructions; he is
commanding, imperative, but he does not show how, nor stay to devise
ways and means. He even perceives, as he thinks, that though the
commands of his pictures, "Faith," "Conscience," and "Love
Triumphant," be given, yet they cannot be obeyed fully because of
"Evolution" and "Destiny," or as he calls it "Movement."
To his intimate friends Watts, who was so introspective, often
complained of "the duality of my nature." In the midst of affairs,
financial or worldly, on questions of criticism, personal conduct and the
like, the great artist was variable and uncertain. Though humble and
self-deprecatory to an extreme degree, he made mistakes from which he
could escape only with great difficulty; and he suffered much from
depression and melancholy. This man, however, never appears in the
pictures; when once in his studio, alone facing his canvas, Watts is final,
absolute, an undisturbed and undistracted unity, conscious of that
overwhelming "rightness" known to a Hebrew prophet. Whatever Time
or Death may have in store for him or any man, there riding swiftly
above them is Judgment the Absolute One; whatever theories may be
spun from the perplexed mind of the magazine writer about Expansion
and Necessity, there sits the terrible "Mammon" pilloried for all time.
Indeed, he said his pictures were "for all time"; they were from the
mind and hand of the seer, who, rising from his personality,
transcended it; and as the personality of dual nature gradually fades
away into the forgotten past, the Messenger emerges ever more and
more clearly, leaving his graphic testimonies spread out upon a
hundred canvases. It might be said as a final estimate that the value and
sincerity of Watts' work becomes intensified a hundred-fold when we
remember that its grandeur and dignity, its unity and its calm, was the
work of a man who seldom, if ever, attained internal peace. Like some

who speak wiser than they know, so Watts gave himself as an
instrument to inspirations of which he was not able, through adverse
circumstances, to make full use. Thus was the Man divided from the
Messenger.
[Illustration: PLATE V.--LOVE AND LIFE
(At the Tate Gallery)
Love, strong in his immortal youth, leads Life, a slight female figure,
along the steep uphill path; with his broad wings he shelters her, that
the winds of heaven may not visit her too roughly. Violets spring where
Love has trod, and as they ascend to the mountain top the air becomes
more and more golden. The implication is that, without the aid of
Divine Love, fragile Human Life could not have power to ascend the
steep path upward. First exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1885.
Companion picture to "Love and Death," and "Love Triumphant."]

III
A REVIEW OF WATTS' WORK
Failing the "Progress of the Cosmos," we have from the mind and brush
of Watts a great number of paintings, which may be grouped according
to their character. Such divisions must not be regarded as rigid or
official, for often enough a picture may belong to several groups at the
same time. For the purpose of our survey, however, we divide them as
follows:
1. Monumental or Historical Paintings and Frescoes. 2. Humanitarian
or Social Paintings. 3. Portraits, private and public. 4. Biblical
Paintings. 5. Mythical Paintings. 6. "Pessimistic" Paintings. 7. The
Great Realities. 8. The Love Series. 9. The Death Series. 10.
Landscapes. 11. Unclassified Paintings. 12. Paintings of Warriors.
"Caractacus" was the first of the monumental paintings; by them Watts
appears as a citizen and a patriot, whose insular enthusiasm extends
backward to the time when the British chief Caractacus fought and was
subdued by the Romans. He enters also into the spirit of the resistance
offered to the Danes by King Alfred. George and the Dragon are
included by him in the historical though mythical