The gallery itself is totally unique. It was built at the very end of Watts long, & eventful life. Two of its greatest assets today are the Curator Richard Jefferies, & his assistant Emma Dennis, who are genuine Watts enthusiasts, & who put their knowledge & expertise at the disposal of visitors. 

At his best Watts was amongst the very greatest of Victorian artists. His range of artistic interests were wider than those of any of his contemporaries. Because of this his artistic standards are more variable. He did not find a comfortable artistic furrow, & continue to plough it time & again, as did some of his contemporaries. Throughout his life, the artist always regarded himself as physically delicate, but he rather disproved this by living to be eighty seven years of age. The gallery is not without its rough edges in terms of décor, & the structure of the building, but this merely serves to make it more genuine, less sanitised, & the experience of visiting it more interesting. It has never had vast expenditure on modernization, & the visitor would hardly be surprised if Mary Watts suddenly appeared round a corner.

Watts was untypical of the most successful Victorian artists, in that he was not driven by a need to achieve high social position, or to become materially successful. He remained the social idealist all his life, & twice turned down a baronetcy, unlike Burne-Jones who accepted one, & never ceased to regret it. Watts was not ever really interested in money, though he earned enough to run two large houses. Ultimately he wanted to earn enough money to carry on with his art. An illustration of this was his Hall of Fame, where he painted leading men & women of the day, without fee, & presented the portraits to the National Portrait Gallery. Collectively the darkly coloured portraits give a sombre impression, but Watts always captured the character of his sitters. The portrait of Field Marshall Lord Roberts “Bobs,” the hero of the Victorian private soldier is a good example of this. (National Portrait Gallery, Bodlewydden Castle, Abergele, North Wales). 

The Gallery Building 

The architect was Christopher Hatton Turnor, & the building was opened on Good Friday 1904. The walls are of rendered concrete, there is a tiled roof, & the building is long, & low. The A3 now passes quite close to the building, & there is some traffic noise. In spite of this the gallery, & surroundings still manage to maintain a rural charm of their own. The galleries are top-lit, which was wonderful on the day of my recent visit, but nowhere as effective on my previous visit in October 1998. Mary Watts had the main gallery built in 1906, to add more wall space. The walls have now been repainted in the original apple green & gold, rather reminding me of the colour scheme of old London & North Eastern Railway express locomotives.

 The Social Paintings  

Watts always felt that people at the top of the social tree, who consumed conspicuously, & contributed nothing, were a drain on the vitality of the country. This is an understandable view, even more so from Watts, who came from nothing, & worked indefatigably until the onset of his final illness in his eighty eighth year. The Irish Eviction, Found Drowned, & The Song of The Shirt are still today, very touching, & effective evocations of the depth of suffering & deprivation of the poor at that time. They date from the late 1840s, when the painter himself was in difficulties, & living in central London, where the conditions of the urban poor would have been evident. In the case of Watts, however, he was never bought-off, like some of his contemporaries, who moved from recording social deprivation to specialising in society portraits. 

The Portraits 

Watts was one of the leading portrait painters of his day, & must have painted more of “the great & the good,” of his time than any other painter, including his famous Hall of Fame. Watts rather despised portraiture, because of its transparent  commerciality, & the role of the painter as a hired tradesman. I suspect that he was at his best, as a portrait painter. The gallery contains many examples of his portraits, both original paintings & facsimiles. There are a number of self-portraits, the well known picture of his second wife, & one of his portraits of his friend Tennyson. The portrait of the Watts adopted daughter Lily Chapman was painted in the last year of his life. The picture has the usual excellent depiction of the character of the sitter, & the drapery painting of her ornate clothes is of a high order. Watts produced this picture in 1904, the year of his death, & it shows no diminution of his creative or technical ability.

The Landscapes 

In some of these pictures Watts seems to be reaching for infinity, & the spectacular effects of light would do credit to Turner. Sunset In The Alps is an illustration of this, truly one of the greatest paintings of the 19^th century. The Forty First Day is another comparable picture. 

The Allegorical/Symbolist Pictures 

These pictures were the most important to the artist himself, & I think he regarded them as his perhaps his life's mission. The Watts Museum has some of his greatest & most successful paintings in this area of his output. I have seen allegorical paintings by the artist, in other locations, which are not wholly successful. 

Orpheus and Eurydice

Sculpture 

Watts nickname 'England’s Michelangelo' was gained because of the breadth of his activities, which like the Renaissance artist included both painting & sculpture. Having read much about Watts in recent years, it was only when I first visited the gallery in 1998, I realised the scope of his activities as a sculptor. In his later career, Watts used small wax models, to enable him to study the pose of his model, particularly when the pose would have been impossible for the flesh & blood model to hold for any length of time.

Physical Energy