DOI chapter:
Chapter VII: Leighton
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.62482#0370
204 REMINISCENCES OF G. F. WATTS
“ these things, as this is the last of Brighton for me.” As
with the portrait of Walter Crane, he had no time to weaken
it; the frank pose, the strength and simplicity in the treat-
ment of the black dress against the fine gold background, are
signs of qualities which Watts’ work did but at times evince.
“ Uldra ” was the picture exhibited which gave one quality
of his work in its most obvious form. Having, as a rule,
painted in a low key, however brilliant the colour, Watts in
“ Love and Life,” “ Uldra,” and several landscape pictures,
pitched the scheme of tone light and fair. In “ Uldra” there
is no tint deeper than is found in a nautilus shell. Examples
of the last phase of Watts’ technique were to be seen in
“ Love steering the Barque of Humanity,” and in “ Peace
and Goodwill,” where the dry pigment was put on with loose,
large free touches. The vigour with which Watts carried
out the lines of the composition in the first of these pictures
is extraordinary, considering his age at the time it was
painted. Gusts of wind seem verily to be tearing along,
swirling the clouds and sweeping down on the waves, flatten-
ing their furrows, and stretching the sail till it bounds from its
fastening and the two ropes that held it appear to be actually
flung before your eyes into the air. Again, in “ Progress,” a
picture which Watts discussed very eagerly with me, show-
ing much excited interest in the subject, the extraordinary
sense of plunging forward through the ages realised in the
action of the horse, suggests a power arising more, I think,
from vitality in the psychic than in the physical condition
of the worker. For certainly, if Watts’ own description in
his letters of his bodily state at the time these pictures were
painted was correct, it was anything but vigorous. He feels
“time’s heavy hand ” upon him. He writes from Scotland in
the autumn of 1899, where he at last sees that beauty in the
scenery which Leighton so keenly enjoyed almost every
“ these things, as this is the last of Brighton for me.” As
with the portrait of Walter Crane, he had no time to weaken
it; the frank pose, the strength and simplicity in the treat-
ment of the black dress against the fine gold background, are
signs of qualities which Watts’ work did but at times evince.
“ Uldra ” was the picture exhibited which gave one quality
of his work in its most obvious form. Having, as a rule,
painted in a low key, however brilliant the colour, Watts in
“ Love and Life,” “ Uldra,” and several landscape pictures,
pitched the scheme of tone light and fair. In “ Uldra” there
is no tint deeper than is found in a nautilus shell. Examples
of the last phase of Watts’ technique were to be seen in
“ Love steering the Barque of Humanity,” and in “ Peace
and Goodwill,” where the dry pigment was put on with loose,
large free touches. The vigour with which Watts carried
out the lines of the composition in the first of these pictures
is extraordinary, considering his age at the time it was
painted. Gusts of wind seem verily to be tearing along,
swirling the clouds and sweeping down on the waves, flatten-
ing their furrows, and stretching the sail till it bounds from its
fastening and the two ropes that held it appear to be actually
flung before your eyes into the air. Again, in “ Progress,” a
picture which Watts discussed very eagerly with me, show-
ing much excited interest in the subject, the extraordinary
sense of plunging forward through the ages realised in the
action of the horse, suggests a power arising more, I think,
from vitality in the psychic than in the physical condition
of the worker. For certainly, if Watts’ own description in
his letters of his bodily state at the time these pictures were
painted was correct, it was anything but vigorous. He feels
“time’s heavy hand ” upon him. He writes from Scotland in
the autumn of 1899, where he at last sees that beauty in the
scenery which Leighton so keenly enjoyed almost every