GF Watts: Victorian Visionary

Surprisingly large exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery of the work of G. F. Watts made possible by the closure of the Watts Gallery for a restoration and development project.

The exhibition is set out chronologically and takes you through Watts’s life and work in a very logical fashion. The detail on his life was done well covering the relationship with Little Holland House and the Pattle family. This link interests me for its Bloomsbury links.

On the whole the work is a little chocolate boxy but it provides a link between the Pre-Raphaelites and the more conventional Victorian world.

I had partly gone because I bought a G.F. Watts drawing about a year ago and I wanted to see if I could find a link with a finished work. My picture is sketches from his honeymoon in Egypt and I did see a glimpse of it in “For he had great possessions” a biblical study so I was delighted.

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