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An Overview of the Collection

History of Watts Gallery Collection


Ever since its foundation in 1904, Watts Gallery has continued to be the chief repository of G. F. Watts’s work. When Watts Gallery first opened, the collection included 109 core works, primarily finished oil paintings and a few sketches, all by G.F. Watts, donated by the artist from his London studio in Kensington. The collection was subsequently enriched by gifts from Mary Seton Watts and Lilian Chapman (née Macintosh, Watts’s adopted daughter), and has been expanding through other bequests and donations as well as new acquisitions.

Scope of Watts Gallery Collection


Today the Gallery houses over 6000 diverse objects including over 250 oil paintings, 800 drawings and watercolours, some 130 prints, 200 sculptures, and 240 pieces of pottery as well as unique ephemera and memorabilia related to G. F. Watts, Mary Seton Watts and the history of Watts Gallery. The Gallery also has two rare photographic collections-over 300 photographic reproductions of Watts’s untraced paintings by Frederick Hollyer, as well as the newly-acquired Rob Dickins Collection of over 4000 photographs of Victorian artists. The artworks range from finished masterpieces to sketches, studies, sculptural maquettes and purely experimental works never intended for public display. The nature and scope of the Watts Gallery collection make it a fascinating resource for the study of Watts’s working methods and techniques. It demonstrates Watts’s remarkable evolution as an artist in terms of style and subject matter over the seven decades of his active career, as well as his responses and contribution to the development of British and European art of the nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Watts Gallery Archive


Watts Gallery Archive comprises unique material on the life and art of G. F. Watts and his two wives, Ellen Terry and Mary Seton Watts, recorded in the wider context of the Victorian times. It complements Watts Gallery’s fine arts and decorative arts collections and is a rich resource at our Study Centre for the Exploration of Victorian Art, Social History and Craft. Watts Gallery archival collections consist of the G. F. Watts Papers (comprising original letters to and from fellow artists and important historic figures, memorabilia, photographs and material relating to the artist’s social interests), the Mary Seton Watts Papers (including diaries, personal notebooks and exercise books, Chapel and Compton Pottery material) as well as the Watts Gallery Papers (ranging from trustees minutes, through accounts, registers of pictures, and architectural plans to news cuttings).

Access to Material


Throughout the Restoration period (October 2008-July 2010) there will be limited access to archival material by appointment only. The Rob Dickins Collection of Victorian photographs will be available to the public at the Witt Library in Somerset House, London, thanks to the generosity of the Courtauld Institute of Art. We hope that the database of our entire collection will provide answers to general enquiries about the collection.