ABSTRACT
Through sheer quantity, diversity and engagement with seemingly antagonistic values over an extended period of production, the paintings of G. F. Watts have always created difficulties of critical focus. Appraising some of the most notable pictures in 1902, D. S. MacColl spoke of 'incompatibility of ambitions ... Contradictory impulses of Olympian, Titanic and vaguely religious impulse [which] argue an uncertainty of temperament and aim ... a mixture of ideals in vision, none of them thoroughly and persistently pursued.' 1 Though sparse in comparison to the paintings, similar criticisms may be levelled at Watts's sculpture. Nevertheless, the critical problems associated with marshalling the paintings into some sort of structural coherence are greatly reduced by the presence in Watts's œuvre of two notional series, the Hall of Fame and the House of Life, to which commentators have often appended discussion of comparable though ostensibly 'homeless' works. The sculptures, too few and too disparate to build into any such unifying discourse, have tended to be separated into convenient genres: 'classical' subjects, memorial sculptures and equestrian statues. Such reductive categorization obscures both the integrative and ambitious facets of Watts's sculptural vision, including those projects which transcended the boundaries of the conventional and possible but remained either unrealized or unresolved. These need to be examined alongside the handful of comparatively familiar works to establish a more accurate sense of how Watts negotiated between developing an increasingly personal sculptural language while consistently defending sculpture's public role.
