George Frederic Watts

1817–1904

In Tate Britain

Walk Through British Art: 1840

Free entry

In Tate Britain

Prints and Drawings Rooms

View by Appointment

Biography

George Frederic Watts, RA (London 23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was an English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License. Spotted a problem? Let us know.

Read full Wikipedia entry

Artworks

George Frederic Watts and assistants Hope

1886

On display at Tate Britain part of Walk Through British Art N01640

George Frederic Watts The Minotaur

1885

N01634

George Frederic Watts Love and Death

c.1885–7

On display at Tate Britain part of Walk Through British Art N01645

George Frederic Watts Mammon

1884–5

N01630

George Frederic Watts Love and Life

c.1884–5

N01641

George Frederic Watts ‘For he had great possessions’

1894

N01632

George Frederic Watts Time, Death and Judgement

1900

N01693

George Frederic Watts Death Crowning Innocence

1886–7

N01635

See all 44

Artist as subject

George Frederic Watts Self-Portrait

1864

N01561

Sir Charles Holroyd Sketch of G.F. Watts

1897

N03397

Anita Bartle, Grant Richards (London, UK) This is my Birthday

1902

View by appointment TGA 969/2/4

Henry Scott Tuke Diary of Henry Scott Tuke

12 March 1899–31 December 1905

TGA 9019/1/1/1

Film and audio

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.

Listen

Nicholas Tromans – Limnerlease and Watts Gallery

Nicholas Tromans discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by an ambitious small museum, the Watts Gallery, based on a single ...

Watch

George Frederic Watts - The Eve Trilogy

Tate curator of 19th century British art, Alison Smith, talks about five George Frederic Watts works in the Tate Collection

Watch

George Frederic Watts - Hope 1886

Curator's talk

Watch

George Frederic Watts - The Court of Death 1870-1902

Tate curator of 19th century British art, Alison Smith, talks about five George Frederic Watts works in the Tate Collection.

Features

Tate Etc

George Frederic Watts's The Minotaur

Ed Atkins

Tate Etc. at Tate Britain / Artists' Perspectives

George Frederic Watts' Satan painted in 1847

Tate Etc

G.F. Watts: symbolist and star-gazer

Simon Grant1

G.F. Watts (1817–1904) has been variously described as one of the ‘heroic failures of British art’ and ‘shallow ...

Tate Papers

Listening for the Sublime: Aural-Visual Improvisations in Nineteenth-Century Musical Art

Charlotte Purkis

Music’s capacity to expose the contradictions which emerged within late nineteenth-century understandings of the sublime is explored in relation ...

Augustus Leopold Egg, ‘Past and Present, No. 1’ 1858

Tate Papers

A Dramatic Reading of Augustus Leopold Egg’s Untitled Triptych

Annabel Rutherford

This article explores the significance of the theatrical and literary references found in the triptych Past and Present 1858 by ...

Turner’s ‘Chelsea’ palette, used at the end of his life

Tate Papers

The Materials Used by British Oil Painters in the Nineteenth Century

Joyce H. Townsend

This paper reviews existing literature on nineteenth-century British artists’ materials. Sources of information, such as colourmen’s archives, artists’ diaries ...

Tate Etc