“George Watts: the fluidity of artistic practice
George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was a versatile artist who was able to express his creativity through various mediums. His artistic practice was characterized by fluidity, where he would often explore the same subject matter in different forms of art.
One of Watts’s remarkable practices was to create paintings that would influence his sculpture and vice versa. By doing so, he was able to have a more profound understanding of the subject matter he was depicting. For instance, Watts painted the tragic story of Orpheus and Eurydice on multiple occasions. Each painting captured a highly dramatic moment of the story. The composition of the paintings was similar, yet each artwork conveyed a unique emotional expression.
Watts’s painting of Orpheus and Eurydice captured a poignant moment where Orpheus was grasping the pale figure of Eurydice as she swooned back towards the land of the dead. The painting displayed Eurydice’s body hanging limp in Orpheus’s arms as he twisted violently back to cling to her. The outline of her body was already dissolving into the dark background, creating a sense of emotional intensity.
Watts’s sculptures were also notable for their dynamic and emotional expressions. He believed that sculpture should convey movement and feeling, which he achieved by using a technique he called “living form.”
His sculptures and preparatory models of Orpheus displayed the same sense of drama and intensity as his paintings. The sculptures captured the moment when Orpheus turns to look back at Eurydice as she is being taken back to the underworld. The emotion in the sculptures was palpable, and the feeling of loss was conveyed through the poses of the figures.
In addition to his fluid approach to art, Watts also used plaster models to gain a better understanding of the light and shadow across the form of each figure. By creating plaster models, he could observe how the light would fall across the figures and adjust the tonal variation accordingly.
The collection of plaster models held by the Watts Gallery Trust is an essential record of Watts’s practice as a painter-sculptor. These models were usually destroyed, making the collection all the more important for understanding Watts’s artistic process. The Orpheus model is a prime example of this, demonstrating how the use of plaster models helped Watts achieve a deeper understanding of the human form and produce exceptional artworks.
Many of these precious preparatory models have been 3D scanned during Scan the World’s trip to the Watts Gallery. The digitised models can be downloaded CC0 from Scan the World full collection on the Watts Gallery profile.
