DOI Kapitel:
Chapter VI: Sickness, Travels, and Old Age
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62482#0354
I9o REMINISCENCES OF G. F. WATTS
something in the mind of the beholder.” In this picture
of “ Faith, Hope, and Charity” he explained to me how he
intended to convey the meaning that the belligerent element
in Faith, as she had been conceived by the Churches,
succumbs under the beneficence and loveliness in Nature,
while Hope and Charity, in tune with the gentler influences
of this Nature, guide her to the reviving spring of Truth
where, unloosening her sword, she washes her blood-stained
foot in its waters. He told me he particularly wished this
picture included in those I was choosing at that time for
the Leighton House exhibition, so that I might describe
his idea to the people whom I took round the studios,
especially to those belonging to the poorer classes. He
repeated the wish to his man Thompson, who was to see
to the removing of the pictures ; but, unfortunately, when
the time came, Watts wrote saying he thought he must
work further on it before it was seen.
He was ever anxious to bring quieting thoughts and
feelings to those in whom the harsh judgments in human
creeds carry with them fear and alarms. His sense of
justice was outraged by the idea that human beings
should be punished for what they could not help. From
being himself most sensitive to pain, physical and mental,
he had a deep compassion for all kinds of suffering. He
felt almost too much sympathy with it at times to allow
him to dwell on it, realising, especially when he was very
old, that any strong emotion led to conditions tending to
the loss of his mental balance. The idea that any human
organisations such as Churches should create terror in the
simple and the semi-educated by scares of such retribution,
which no action nor control of their thoughts could obviate,
and thus create mental suffering which was one of the
worst to bear, seemed an abomination to Watts. Through
something in the mind of the beholder.” In this picture
of “ Faith, Hope, and Charity” he explained to me how he
intended to convey the meaning that the belligerent element
in Faith, as she had been conceived by the Churches,
succumbs under the beneficence and loveliness in Nature,
while Hope and Charity, in tune with the gentler influences
of this Nature, guide her to the reviving spring of Truth
where, unloosening her sword, she washes her blood-stained
foot in its waters. He told me he particularly wished this
picture included in those I was choosing at that time for
the Leighton House exhibition, so that I might describe
his idea to the people whom I took round the studios,
especially to those belonging to the poorer classes. He
repeated the wish to his man Thompson, who was to see
to the removing of the pictures ; but, unfortunately, when
the time came, Watts wrote saying he thought he must
work further on it before it was seen.
He was ever anxious to bring quieting thoughts and
feelings to those in whom the harsh judgments in human
creeds carry with them fear and alarms. His sense of
justice was outraged by the idea that human beings
should be punished for what they could not help. From
being himself most sensitive to pain, physical and mental,
he had a deep compassion for all kinds of suffering. He
felt almost too much sympathy with it at times to allow
him to dwell on it, realising, especially when he was very
old, that any strong emotion led to conditions tending to
the loss of his mental balance. The idea that any human
organisations such as Churches should create terror in the
simple and the semi-educated by scares of such retribution,
which no action nor control of their thoughts could obviate,
and thus create mental suffering which was one of the
worst to bear, seemed an abomination to Watts. Through