Watts and America

George Frederic Watts
Self Portrait in Old Age
1903-04

George Frederic Watts
Love and Life (study)
1880s

George Frederic Watts
Hope
Private collection

American Supporters
of Watts Gallery

We are extremely grateful for the generous support of our American friends including Christopher Forbes and The Prince of Wales Foundation and
The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation.

G F Watts OM RA (1817-1904)

Watts was one of Britain’s most eminent artists. He left a legacy of masterworks at Tate Britain and the National Portrait Gallery and his work forms part of collections in the United States, Canada and Australia. He has been described as England’s Michelangelo and the forerunner of the symbolist movement and New Sculpture movement. During his life, Watts believed passionately in Art for All.  With his second wife, Mary Seton Watts (his first wife was the actress Ellen Terry), Watts founded a public art gallery in the heart of the Surrey hills to share his studio collection with everyone and to provide training and education for apprentice potters employed in his wife’s Compton Potters’ Arts Guild. Together G F Watts and Mary Seton Watts promoted the ideals of the Arts & Crafts movement in a small corner of South East England. The Watts Village includes the outstanding Arts & Crafts Cemetery chapel designed by Mary Watts, the pottery buildings which housed the Compton Potters’ Arts Guild, the Gallery housed in a listed Arts & Crafts building and nearby, privately owned, the Wattses’ home, Limnerslease.

Watts and America

Watts was the first living artist to have a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. His solo exhibition, opened in 1884, attracted over half a million people and had to be extended for a further six months due to public demand. In gratitude for the show, Watts was elected by the Metropolitan Museum’s trustees as an Honorary Life Fellow. In turn, Watts gave his allegorical painting Love and Life to the American people. This gift was aimed at starting the first national art collection. The picture aroused great controversy between the Congress and the Metropolitan Museum about where it should be displayed. It was temporarily installed in the White House but objections by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union of the United States, who were horrified by its nudity, led to it being moved to the Corcoran Art Gallery, Washington. Later, President Theodore Roosevelt had it returned to the White House, again causing controversy at its loss of display to the nation. A later President consigned the painting to the Smithsonian Institution, from where it was eventually sold in 1987.

Watts Gallery Hope Project

Watts Gallery, founded in 1904 to promote Art for All, is unique in being the only purpose built art gallery for a single professional artist in Britain. One hundred years since it opened, the Grade II* listed Arts & Crafts building is at serious risk and, without urgent support, will not survive. In a recent nationwide BBC televised competition, Restoration Village 2006, Watts Gallery secured the most votes but came second in the final. It is described as a national treasure and a hidden gem. The Watts Gallery Hope Appeal, which takes its name from Watts’s iconic painting of a blindfold woman sitting astride the globe, seeks to raise $20m to secure the financial future of the Gallery. The project aims to restore the building, conserve the collection, extend the education programme (Art for All) and establish Watts Gallery as a centre for the exploration of Victorian art, social history and craft.

Your Support

The Hope Appeal has already raised over $2m in gifts and pledges and has secured an earmarked grant of $8.6m from the publicly funded Heritage Lottery Fund. However, to unlock the HLF money, we need to raise a further $4m by March 2008. We welcome the generous support of our American friends including Christopher Forbes and The Prince of Wales Foundation. The Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation has generously pledged over $1m to help secure this quintessentially English national gem.

Watts Gallery can receive gifts in the United States through www.cafamerica.org or by writing to:

CAF America, King Street Station, 1800 Diagonal Road, Suite 150, Alexandria, VA 22314-2840

or call (1) (703) 549 8931.