Figures struggle out of fire on the left towards a group of figures on the right — G F Watts, *Chaos*, 1875 - 82, oil on canvas
Watts Gallery Trust

Chaos shows G F Watts’s vision of the beginnings of Earth and Time. On the left, figures crawl from under rocks and emerge out of fire. In the centre, a massive figure slides up from the water and moves towards a group of reclining giants. Below the giants, a trail of small people in classical drapery symbolise the measure of regular human time against cosmic and geological time.

Watts did not illustrate a single culture’s creation myth. Instead, he showed his own ideas of order and time at the beginning of the world. He thought of it as the ‘first chapter’ of a scheme of paintings he called ‘The House of Life’. In this series he aimed to show the origins of the universe, the course of history and human life. Watts made plaster sketches of the figures to the left of Chaos to use as models, and many of the figures reappear in other paintings.