Watts, George Frederic

Watts, George Frederic, 1817–1904, English painter and sculptor. He studied at the Royal Academy and in Italy, where he developed an enthusiasm for Renaissance painting and Greek sculpture that greatly influenced his work. He executed several decorative commissions, including his large fresco Justice (Lincoln's Inn, London), modeled after Raphael's School of Athens. Many of his allegorical pictures are in the Tate Gallery, London. The National Portrait Gallery, London, contains a large collection of his portraits of eminent contemporaries. The Metropolitan Museum has his Ariadne in Naxos. He was married to Ellen Terry and later to Mary Fraser-Tytler, who wrote a biography of him (3 vol., 1912). His home at Compton is now the Watts Gallery.

Bibliography

See also studies by C. T. Bateman (1901) and G. K. Chesterton (1904).