George Frederic Watts, O.M., R.A.

Sotheby's, Belgravia, 9 March 1976, lot 48;
Private collection

Yamanashi Perfectural Museum of Art and touring to four other Japanese museums, Victorian Dreamers: Masterpieces of Neo-Classical and Aesthetic Movements in Britain, 1989, no.5

STRUCTURE The canvas has been relined. There is some minor paint shrinkage and an old fleck of paint loss to the Love's neck. Generally, the work is in good overall condition, clean and ready to hang. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV reveals flecks of retouching to the lower edge and foreground, to the upper edge, the doorframe on the right and a spot to the doorframe upper left. There are further flecks and spots, including to the left of Love's right foot, to Love's neck and elbow, and to Death's drapery and extended arm. FRAME Held in a gilt plaster frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

'What time the mighty moon was gathered light
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise,
And all about him roll'd his lustrous eyes;
When, turning round a cassia, full in view,
Death walking alone beneath a yew,
And talking to himself, first met his sight:
"You must begone" said Death, "these walks are mine."
Love wept and spread his sheeny vans for flight;
Yet ere he parted said, "This hour is thine:
Thou are the shadow of life, and as the tree
Stands in the sun and shadow all beneath,
So in the light of great eternity
Life eminent creates the shade of death;
The shadow passeth when the tree shall fall,
But I shall reign for ever over all.'
(Tennyson, Love and Death, 1830)

Love and Death is arguably Watts' most memorable and influential of pictures, among the best-known masterpieces of the wider European Symbolist Movement. Extant in several versions (in the public galleries at Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, Adelaide, Melbourne, in the Tate collection and in various private collections, one of which was sold in these rooms, 8 June 1999, lot 29) the large prime version was completed in 1877 (FIG 1. Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester) and exhibited at the pioneering inaugural show at the Grosvenor Gallery of that year and shown virtually continuously for a decade and at every subsequent opportunity for the artist to do so. Watts described it as 'one of the most important things I can do and shall ever do.'

At the threshold of the tomb-like 'House of Life', the grim figure of Death, clad in a diaphanous dark shroud, pushes open the portal that seals the sepulchral shrine to enter and claim the soul within.  A golden Angel of Love bars Death's path and, as Watts explained; 'Love is not restraining Death, for it cannot do so; I wish to suggest the passionate though unvailing struggle to avert the inevitable' (M.S. letter from Watts to Charles Rickards, 27 December 1874). An ominous shadow in descending upon the body of Love and it seems that Death cannot be halted. Watts continued his letter to Rickards by explaining his motive for painting the picture; 'You know my great desire to use such talents as I may have and such experience in art as I have been able to acquire, with the object of proving that Art, like Poetry and Music may suggest the noblest and tenderest thoughts, inspiring and awakening, if only for a time, the highest sensibilities of our nature.'

Although Watts had used Tennyson's words as inspiration, the mood of his powerful allegory was also influenced by a real-life experience, which was revealed during an interview in 1884 when one of the versions was exhibited in New York; 'The idea of this picture first came to the artist's mind about fifteen years ago. He was then painting the portrait of a man who, while still young, and showing every promise of becoming one of the most distinguished men of his time, was attacked by a lingering and fatal illness.' (Paintings by G.F. Watts, exhibition catalogue for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1884, p.42) The young man was William Schomberg Kerr, 8^th Marquess of Lothian (1832-1870) whose wife Lady Constance was a friend of Watts. The artist was greatly moved by the fortitude of Lothian as he faced his death and he exhibited the first version of Love and Death a few months after Lothian was expected to die.

It is problematic to date the various versions of Love and Death as Watts often worked on several versions simultaneously, returning to rework pictures after many years. The present version has many differences to the prime version, particularly the colouring of Death's robes which have a heavier, morbid intensity. The figures of both Love and Death are more muscular and Mannerist, with the nakedness of Death visible through the garments which gives a robustness to the figure as it forcibly pushes forward. Free of the detail of the climbing-roses and jasmine, the dove and the architectural detail, this version is pared down to an almost abstract extent with no peripheral distractions to dilute the power of the struggle of the two forces of Light (Love) and Darkness (Death).