George Frederick Watts O.M., R.A. 1817-1904

The finished version of Hyperion is reproduced in the illustrated record of Watts' work by George Newnes (plate 6) and a chalk drawing was exhibited at Watts memorial exhibition at the Laing Art Gallery in 1905. A similar composition is that of Idle Child of Fancy (New York, Sotheby's, 11 December 2003, lot 140). The motif of a monumental, Michelangelesque figure sitting on top of the world, was one which Watts explored in the famous Hope.

Hyperion was one of the Titans, the primordial giants from classical mythology that fought against the Olympian gods for control of the world. Watts had painted the fight of the Titans in the Chaos series of visionary pictures begun in the early 1870s. Hyperion was child of the union between Gaea the godess of the earth and Uranus the god of the heavens. In the final painting Hyperion is depicted with Artemis, the virgin-huntress and moon-goddess, upon whose crescent they reside. Hyperion holds one of Artemis's deadly golden arrows, with which she killed Callisto, Actaeon and the children of Niobe.