Jane Austen was born on 16 December 1775. 2025 marks her 250th Anniversary.

Jane Austen is probably Britain’s best-loved writer. Her novels are increasingly popular, over two hundred years after their publication, while most of the works of her contemporaries have retreated into the domain of specialist English Literature scholars. What you may not know is that George Frederic Watts, O.M., R.A. (1817 – 1904), one of Victorian England’s most eminent artists, and his wife Mary, were also big fans.

G. F. Watts married, late but very happily, in 1886. Mary Seton Fraser Tytler, who had become his second wife, kept a diary. The surviving volumes are now owned by their memorial museum, Watts Gallery. Here we read that the couple took Pride and Prejudice with them on their honeymoon and that it was a book that George Watts virtually knew by heart.

Later, Mary Watts analysed the particular appeal of Jane Austen to them in more detail, making interesting comparisons with Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1853 novel. They had read this together in Malta in another winter abroad in 1887-8, when Mary Watts noted,

‘Our evening spent reading "Cranford". It belongs to the same class as Miss Austen, but the pathetic is too much there for Signor.’ (Mary Watts Diary, 20 November 1887. ‘Signor’ was G. F. Watts’s nickname among close friends.)

The comparisons recurred when the couple read Jane Austen’s Emma together in London in 1891. In that era before radio or television, novels were often read aloud to entertain the family circle. It was as important – possibly more important – in the dissemination of a book, than the solitary, silent reading which is the norm today.

‘1891, Monday 12 October. London, Signor in the drawing room when dusk came on, cosily in his niche, & read "Emma" to him, the very thing that always amuses & does him good, if he is inclined to be low - one can read these books constantly & always find them fresh. The delicate truth & refined wit of them only comes out the more as one knows them better –

1891, Tuesday 13 October .We shared our evening with Miss Austen - Signor says Cranford comes near it for charm, but I feel that there is conscious art in Cranford - the absence of which in Miss Austen makes her work unique - The very absence of all poetry, all emotion, all idealisation of any hero or heroine makes her work unique - I cannot re read any other novels almost.’

At first sight, George Frederic Watts might seem an unlikely admirer of Jane Austen. The paintings by which he set most store are grand generalisations, conveying a mood of high seriousness and dealing with abstract themes, such as Time, Death and Judgment,Evolution, or Love and Life (small version, 1880s Watts Gallery COMWG 175).

He also liked to paint archetypal themes from classical mythology and the Bible, such as Orpheus and Eurydice or Eve Tempted and Eve Repentant. At first sight, there are no parallels in his art to the observation of contemporary behaviour, which is Jane Austen’s domain and that of mid-Victorian painters of modern life, such as William Powell Frith. But the other side of Watts’s work was portraiture, which bankrolled his more ambitious painting. He also gave portraiture a more serious dimension, in creating a ‘Hall of Fame’ of eminent Victorians to present to the Nation (now housed in the National Portrait Gallery) and in his belief that a portrait should depict the essence of a personality, not merely a passing appearance.

In portraiture, he was sensitive to the nuances of character – and here, perhaps, one can find the qualities that made him responsive to Jane Austen’s genius. Compare, for instance, the flirtatiousness of Augusta, Lady Holland (Watts Gallery, c. 1844, COMWG 55) with the wistful seriousness of his portrait of his wife Mary, painted in those wet honeymoon weeks in Constantinople (1887, Watts Gallery COMWG 7). And of course, he would have also responded to the underlying morality of Jane Austen’s vision: what Mary Watts above characterized as her ‘delicate truth’.

This is the quality which Jane voiced through her most loveable heroine, Elizabeth Bennet: while declaring, ‘Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can,’ she also asserted, ‘I hope I never ridicule what is wise or good.’ (Pride and Prejudice, chapter 11)

One intriguing mystery remains – how and when did G. F. Watts encounter Jane Austen’s books and become an admirer?

Sadly, it seems to be an unanswerable question. Four of her novels were published in her lifetime: Persuasion and Northanger Abbey came out in the year of her death, 1817. All fell out of print in the 1820s (although they would still have been available through circulating libraries), but Bentley acquired the copyrights in 1832 and republished them: they have been in print ever since. George Frederic Watts was born on 23rd February 1817. His lifetime overlaps Jane Austen’s by a few months – she died on 18th July. Could he have known her work since his childhood, perhaps through his mother Harriet or his two much older half-sisters Maria and another Harriet?

We know relatively little about his early reading. Mary Watts noted in her 1912 biography of her husband that his love of Walter Scott began early, writing, ‘These novels inspired him then, and throughout life, and were – with the novels of Miss Austen – the books that he turned to most often when tired or unwell.’ (M. S. Watts, George Frederic Watts. The Annals of an Artist’s Life, 1912, vol I, p. 15.) However, this is the only reference to Jane Austen in the biography and from the wording, it is impossible to tell whether he had known her books in childhood like those of Scott – or whether they were a later discovery. If we knew which editions of her work the Wattses were reading this could give us a clue, but there is no evidence for this either.

The estate duty inventory of the Watts’s Compton home Limnerslease (September 1938) made after the death of Mary Watts and the catalogue of the sale that followed (13-15 March 1939) revealed a book-lover’s house. But the documents give only selected titles. For instance, the inventory notes in Mary Watts’s bedroom ‘THE BOOKS. Various about 210 volumes,’ with a further 78 in her dressing room and 32 in the large bedroom, no titles given. Books are listed in other rooms throughout the house.

In the sale, the books are mainly lotted in groups such as ‘lot 136: the Lounge Hall. The books. Various, 30 vols; lot 137: A ditto lot; 138: a ditto lot.’ No works by Jane Austen are separately listed (though works by George Eliot, the Brownings, Ruskin and Annie Thackeray are, in various places.)

By this date, first and early editions of Austen’s work were collectable and one would imagine would have been spotted and listed. So the absence of Jane Austen in these lists may suggest that G. F. Watts came to her work later – although there is also a possibility that any early editions may have remained in the family or been sold separately to the main sale.

Ronald Chapman (1917-1994), son of the Watts’s ward Lilian, did, after all, become a Bodleian Librarian in Oxford, and one presumes was already developing a keen eye for books, though he was only around 21 at the time of Mary Watts’s death. He was educated at New College Oxford. At Oxford he coincided with his namesake (but as far as I know, no relation) Robert William (R. W.) Chapman, Secretary of the Clarendon Press there, whose 1923 edition of Jane Austen’s novels and subsequent publications were instrumental in raising her work to canonical status.

It is also worth noting that Watts’s next-door-neighbour in Melbury Road from the mid-1870s in a purpose-built Norman Shaw designed red-brick studio house, was Marcus Stone, RA, Britain’s leading painter of romantic Regency scenes. His scenes were invented – he didn’t base his paintings on Jane Austen’s characters, though early in his career he had illustrated Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit for Charles Dickens who was a family friend. The main source of information about Stone – Alfred Lys Baldry, Marcus Stone, His Life and Work, the Art Annual 1896, does not mention Jane Austen but it is probable that he was an admirer. He was close enough to Watts to appear as a prominent artistic mourner at his memorial service at St Paul’s Cathedral on 7th July 1904. (See the illustration in Daily Graphic 8th July 1904 Watts Gallery News Cuttings book II p. 84). So perhaps, just perhaps, George Watts came to Jane Austen through a fellow artist.