G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary
11 November 2008 – 26 April 2009
Guildhall Art Gallery, London
Visit the Guildhall Art Gallery website
G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary is a retrospective exhibition of one of Britain’s greatest and most original artists. Drawn from the collection of Watts Gallery in Compton, Surrey, the works will be returning to London for public display for the first time in over 100 years.
The exhibition will present over 80 paintings, drawings and sculptures exploring all facets of Watts’s artistic output, from his ambitious allegorical work to his portraits, landscapes and engagement with social issues.
In addition, historic photographs and selected archival material will shed light on the artist’s life and career, including the foundation and history of Watts Gallery.
The exhibition will also include a special loan of Watts’s most famous allegorical painting, Hope (1886), a bent and vulnerable figure seated on a globe playing a lyre with all but one string broken – a powerful icon of Victorian faith and doubt.
G. F. Watts: Victorian Visionary, Yale University Press
A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition, and will include essays by Mark Bills (Curator, Watts Gallery), Barbara Bryant (Consultant Curator and Author of GF Watts: Portraits – Fame & Beauty in Victorian Society, NPG 2004 – 2005), Dr Stephanie Brown and Professor Michael Wheeler.
The 2009 Watts Symposium
26 & 27 February 2009
The opening day of the event will take place at Guildhall and will explore Watts within the context of the Victorian age, taking into consideration the artistic, literary and spiritual movements influential at that time.
Click here for further details of the Symposium
A catalogue will be published to accompany the exhibition, and will include essays by Mark Bills, Barbara Bryant, Dr Stephanie Brown and Professor Michael Wheeler. Priced £40 hb and £20 pb. Click here to order your copy.
