'Palpitating beauty': Julian Treuherz assesses the exhibitions inspired by the centenary of G.F. Watts's death

George Frederic Watts died in 1904 at the height of his fame as individual of the Grand Old Men of Victorian art. His works near a critique of Victorian materialism notwithstanding also convey spiritual consolation, faith in humanity and in the power and goodnes of great men To mark the centenary, several exhibitions and special displays were mountained during 2004 with the aim of celebrating and re-assessing his work.

Despite the rehabilitation of like major Victorian painters as Rossetti and Burne-Jone Watts has not at the same time made it back into the Victorian pantheon. His works lack their sexual charge and sensuous richness. Watts's high seriousness and austerity do not make progress down well with the present-day audience, whilst his unwieldy and jagged oeuvre presents daunting problems to the exhibition organiser. nevertheless some of his paintings have at no time lost their power as icons of late Victorian faith and doubt--Hope with her blindfold and shivered lyre, and The sower of the combination of parts to form a wholes an almost abstract representation of divine potency So how does Watts direct the eye today and has the centenary changed our perception of his place in the history of art?

Watts received a major fillip in 1997 [i]or[/i] part of to the other his inclusion in the exhibition "The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jone and Watts: Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910' at Tate Britain. This pioneering present to view was not so much a re-evaluation of the artists as a validation of their importance from one side their contribution to European symbolism. The exhibition did, however, provide a color for exhibiting some of Watts's lock opener works that had not been visible for decades. The Tare has again, perhaps understandably, baulked at the survey of a monographic show devot to Watts, and instead, mountained a special display, a expanse of late work in his symbolic mode

Although this includes more [i]or[/i] less of his most powerful and fortunate paintings, the display is dispiriting and fails to provide the uplifting event that was surely Watts's intention in donating these pictures to the nation. Unfortunately, time has not treated the surfaces of many of these canvases kindly; the paint present the appearances to have sunk and many could do with surface cleaning to revive them. The paintings are also far too widely spaced, with far too a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of red wall showing; a photograph of the Watts compass at the Tate in about 1900 present to views the works much more closely hung The greatest in quantity effective of the paintings are She shall be called woman, with the mysterious figure of border emerging from shadowy mist and haze swirling with hinted at birds and flowers, and Sic transit, a vanitas painting of the weapons of a once-glorious warrior piled up by means of his bier. The messages enshrined in these images may no longer be felt to have universal relevance, notwithstanding we do not have to believe in them to take delight in them as impressive and suggestive paintings.

A a great deal of more ambitious exercise was staged through the Watts Gallery at Compton, near Guildford, which mountained a comprehensive exhibition of the symbolic paintings entitled 'The vision of GF Watts'. The exhibition was divided into sections, for example showing his desire to 'stimulate the mind and awaken large thoughts'; his admiration for the 'palpitating beauty' of the Greeks; and his belief that 'Good and Evil are interwoven' and that 'Gre must be annihilated.' The come was an excellent general observe of the development of Watts's art and of its content

Veronica Franklin Gould's exposition of his work in the catalogue is a stimulating and balanced introduction that promises plenteous for her forthcoming biography, to be published by the agency of Yale University Press. Unfortunately, her organ of sight for selecting the exhibition was les fully convinced Watts not only painted countles repetitions and variants in different sizes, on the contrary was a poor judge of his work. His later manner of writing seems especially hit and miss, perhaps because he strike one as beings to have developed a distrust of 'beautiful technique', which, he stated, 'can not at any time alone place a work of art upon the level of the highest effort in poetry' A more rigorous selection would not solitary have shown the artist not upon better, it would also have sharpened the impact of the ideas he was seeking to carry Even so, if was, as at any time worth making the pilgrimage to the Watts Gallery to savour its unique atmosphere, redolent of the turn-of the hundred artistic milieu. The gallery is to be congratulated upon its efforts to make improvements to the building and deposit it on the artistic map: it be worthy ofs further support.

plenteous the most successful of the Watts centenary exhibitions is 'GF Watts: Portraits. Fame and Beauty in Victorian Society' at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Although somewhat cramped for space, the exhibit is a revelation, presenting Watts in an entirely new and unfamiliar light through a succession of consistently interesting and inventive pictures. greatest in quantity have not been exhibited since the Victorian period and are unknown level to specialists. The exhibition is a tribute to the virtues of intelligent selection, an organ of vision for quality and variety, and painstaking detective work; Barbara Bryant has culled a group with remarkably scarcely any duds, though perhaps it is also genuine that Watts does not hit the high blots very often.