DOI chapter:
Chapter V: Our Friendship
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62482#0173
OUR FRIENDSHIP
77
remarked, a degree of abnormal bluntness and want of sensi-
tiveness to have perpetrated such a crime. “ All things
bright and beautiful ” were those most eminently suited to
Watts’ real and most happy self. In the carrying out of
his work lay the truest and best help he thought he could
give to a sorrowing world. He felt that his vocation was
to try to teach persuasively the minds of his fellow men
and women through noble beauty and symbolism in art to
dwell on elevating themes ; to acquire strength for the daily
toil and weary labour apportioned to so many of us in this
world through looking upward and abroad to larger interests
and ideas than those that close in and surround the necessi-
ties and experiences of merely personal concerns. To main-
tain strength for his own labour was clearly Watts’ first duty,
and to help him to do so that of any who were his real
friends.
Watts would often say that he had been born too early
in the century. Later on vitality in art began to kindle with
real fervour; the pre-Raphaelite school arose, and such
painters as Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Madox Brown, and
Burne-Jones had found a very different and more encourag-
ing atmosphere in which to develope their genius than that
in which Watts found himself in the day when he began
to work. Then, he said, every portrait had for its back-
ground a pillar and a curtain, and no connection whatever
existed between the intellect and the art of the country!
He admired Etty greatly as a painter, and regretted that
he was so much ignored by the younger men. Haydon
interested him much, and he felt in sympathy with him in
many ways. Haydon lacked the technical ingenuity and
individual invention in the actual skill of painting which
Watts acquired through cleverness in guiding his ideas
into pictorial expression. Watts was more patient and less
77
remarked, a degree of abnormal bluntness and want of sensi-
tiveness to have perpetrated such a crime. “ All things
bright and beautiful ” were those most eminently suited to
Watts’ real and most happy self. In the carrying out of
his work lay the truest and best help he thought he could
give to a sorrowing world. He felt that his vocation was
to try to teach persuasively the minds of his fellow men
and women through noble beauty and symbolism in art to
dwell on elevating themes ; to acquire strength for the daily
toil and weary labour apportioned to so many of us in this
world through looking upward and abroad to larger interests
and ideas than those that close in and surround the necessi-
ties and experiences of merely personal concerns. To main-
tain strength for his own labour was clearly Watts’ first duty,
and to help him to do so that of any who were his real
friends.
Watts would often say that he had been born too early
in the century. Later on vitality in art began to kindle with
real fervour; the pre-Raphaelite school arose, and such
painters as Holman Hunt, Rossetti, Madox Brown, and
Burne-Jones had found a very different and more encourag-
ing atmosphere in which to develope their genius than that
in which Watts found himself in the day when he began
to work. Then, he said, every portrait had for its back-
ground a pillar and a curtain, and no connection whatever
existed between the intellect and the art of the country!
He admired Etty greatly as a painter, and regretted that
he was so much ignored by the younger men. Haydon
interested him much, and he felt in sympathy with him in
many ways. Haydon lacked the technical ingenuity and
individual invention in the actual skill of painting which
Watts acquired through cleverness in guiding his ideas
into pictorial expression. Watts was more patient and less