Early Life and Career

George Frederic Watts was born on 23 February 1817 at 52 Queen Street, Bryanston Square, London. His father George Watts (1775-1845) was a pianoforte maker and tuner. His mother Harriet Ann (1786/7-1826) was his father’s second wife and died when Watts was just nine, his three younger brothers having died three years earlier in a measles epidemic. Watts himself suffered from ill health, which meant a strict religious home education augmented by the Iliad and the novels of Walter Scott. His early talent for drawing was encouraged by his father, and in 1827 he entered the studio of the sculptor William Behnes (1794-1865) in Dean Street, Soho. This gave Watts access to the ‘Elgin marbles’, works that would influence him throughout his career.

Watts entered the Royal Academy of Schools on 30 April 1835 but found the relaxed attitude to teaching unhelpful, attending at first intermittently before ceasing to go at all. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1837, when his works included A Wounded Heron and two portraits. Portraiture was both the bread and butter of a burgeoning artist and the opportunity to secure important patrons. His natural ability for portraiture ensured early patronage including many of those of the Ionides family.

In 1842 the Royal fine Arts Commission announced a competition to decorate the new Palaces of Westminster through the submission of large-scale drawings (cartoons). The 140 entries were exhibited a year later and included Watts’s Caractacus Led in Triumph through the Streets of Rome (fragments at the V&A) which won the artists the highest premium of £300.

Mark Bills