National Galleries of Scotland

George Frederic Watts (English, 1817 - 1904)

By the end of his long life and career, Watts had become one of the most famous painters in Britain and beyond. Although a distinguished and prolific portrait painter, his passion lay with large-scale ‘symbolical’ subject paintings and murals. He had many influential friends and patrons, but his relationship with the Royal Academy was uneasy for much of his life, although he eventually became a member in 1867. After a short, unsuccessful marriage with a young actress 30 years his junior, he married Mary Seton Fraser-Tytler in 1886, a cunning woman who distanced him from certain friends. Contrary to his intentions, she prevented the main body of his work going to public bodies after his death, guarding them instead in a new ‘Watts Gallery’ in Compton, Surrey, which is now a public museum.