DOI chapter:
Chapter III: Genius
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62482#0118
46 REMINISCENCES OF G. F. WATTS
pathetic contrasts in life rather than definite themes weighted
with solemn Fate, such as the Greeks commemorate in their
tragedies. The melancholy note in the art of the Slav and
of the Celt is left loose ended, a note of unexplained sadness,
such a one as forms the inner thread of the wild, reckless
bursts in Slav music. The upper surface may be gay and
fearlessly abandoned, but the ground-work is a mystery and
a wailing. It is the contrast of sad and gay, the story of all
the world’s real life.1 You have it in the Hungarian dance
which begins inside the inn where the corpse lies, but goes
on in tune with the dancers and revelry outside. There is
the music for both, interpreting with a strange tragic power
the contrasts of life. Again you have it in the wakes in
Brittany and Ireland. Why that revelry of wild emotion
over the solemn fact of Death ? Some deep spring is
touched, and the native, timid reserve of the race, the
secretive, shy reserve, is broken through, and its daemon
frees itself in a rush of emotion.
So in Watts’ painting. Behind the sensuous glory of
colour, the richness of texture and quality, and the serenity
of Pheidian form, we find a weird, melancholy note. In his
greatest pictures, that note belongs to the theme as well as
to the feeling. In the “Sic Transit” we have the triumph
of his art. Here there is no rift rent in the sky—nothing
to lift off the brooding melancholy of the theme, no hint to
lead the thought upwards from the transitory to the eternal.
After the first “ Love and Death ” was painted I often
pleaded for the further theme, “ Love Triumphant.” It
came at last, but compared to “ Love and Death,” “ Love
Triumphant” was a failure. The Love who was defeated,
1 In 1904, a few months before his death, Watts writes :—“ Glad and sorry ;
is not this an epitome of Life ? Happy those with whom gladness outweighs the
sorrow, for of the last there is, I am afraid, an overbalancing amount.”
pathetic contrasts in life rather than definite themes weighted
with solemn Fate, such as the Greeks commemorate in their
tragedies. The melancholy note in the art of the Slav and
of the Celt is left loose ended, a note of unexplained sadness,
such a one as forms the inner thread of the wild, reckless
bursts in Slav music. The upper surface may be gay and
fearlessly abandoned, but the ground-work is a mystery and
a wailing. It is the contrast of sad and gay, the story of all
the world’s real life.1 You have it in the Hungarian dance
which begins inside the inn where the corpse lies, but goes
on in tune with the dancers and revelry outside. There is
the music for both, interpreting with a strange tragic power
the contrasts of life. Again you have it in the wakes in
Brittany and Ireland. Why that revelry of wild emotion
over the solemn fact of Death ? Some deep spring is
touched, and the native, timid reserve of the race, the
secretive, shy reserve, is broken through, and its daemon
frees itself in a rush of emotion.
So in Watts’ painting. Behind the sensuous glory of
colour, the richness of texture and quality, and the serenity
of Pheidian form, we find a weird, melancholy note. In his
greatest pictures, that note belongs to the theme as well as
to the feeling. In the “Sic Transit” we have the triumph
of his art. Here there is no rift rent in the sky—nothing
to lift off the brooding melancholy of the theme, no hint to
lead the thought upwards from the transitory to the eternal.
After the first “ Love and Death ” was painted I often
pleaded for the further theme, “ Love Triumphant.” It
came at last, but compared to “ Love and Death,” “ Love
Triumphant” was a failure. The Love who was defeated,
1 In 1904, a few months before his death, Watts writes :—“ Glad and sorry ;
is not this an epitome of Life ? Happy those with whom gladness outweighs the
sorrow, for of the last there is, I am afraid, an overbalancing amount.”