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Ophelia by G F Watts has temporarily left the Watts Gallery to be displayed in Can We Stop Killing Each Other, an exhibition at Sainsbury Centre, Norwich. Ophelia was previously covered in-depth in a previous blog post which you can find here.
In Ophelia’s place we have installed G F Watt’s oil painting of Clytie, 1865-69. The painting was never displayed publicly during Watts’s lifetime. William Michael Rossetti, critic, founder member of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, and brother of Christina, Maria, and Dante Gabriel, described the work as George Frederic Watts's “most vigorous” piece of flesh painting.
The mythology of Greek and Rome was a lifelong interest of Watts, and the epic poems of the period inspired many art works. The myth of Clytie changes over time through retellings by different authors. Yet, in all, Clytie was forsaken in love, rejected by the sun-God known as Helios or Apollo. After this rejection she follows her love, the sun, each day. Over 9 days and 9 nights she changes or metamorphoses into a sun-following flower. In the 19th century her transformation was increasingly depicted as into a sunflower. This moment of impending change is captured in Watts painting. She desperately cranes around to the sunflower in the upper corner of the painting. The sunflower represents the sun and foreshadows her transformation. Towards the bottom of the canvas, leaves creep towards her arm.
In the Isabel Goldsmith Patino Gallery, Clytie hangs alongside paintings of similarly doomed relationships. Paolo and Francesca, shows the adulterous lovers entwined tenderly with one another in the second circle of hell. Orpheus and Eurydice, captures the moment when Orpheus desperately clings to Eurydice as she slips back towards the underworld. Further rehanging of this space will be taking place through the autumn.