The reputation of George Frederick Watts (1817–1904) has not fared well for the past 80 years or so. He was much admired during his lifetime (his friend and fellow-artist Lord Leighton even dubbed him ‘England’s Michelangelo’), and his allegories of repentance and hope were still popular during the first world war, but his stock has slumped since then. Perhaps he was dangerously overrated while alive (the fate of so many artists, whose posthumous fall is then all the more evident — think of Graham Sutherland, whose vogue is only now returning more than 20 years after his death); certainly Watts was a shrewd self-promoter, who not only left substantial holdings of his own work to national museums (including the NPG), but also allowed a gallery to be founded in his name near Godalming in Surrey. How sincere was this typically industrious product of the Victorian Age?
It is perhaps too easy to ridicule the man who liked to be called ‘Signor’ by his close friends and who recklessly courted comparison with the Old Masters.
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