GK Meets GF sounds like the title of one of those albums from the mid-20th century when a producer with an eye for money teamed up with an older singer with an instrumentalist of the same age to perform new standards. In this case it is a book from the beginning of the 20th century when the Christian-inspired writer GK Chesterton analyzed with pencil and paper the work of GF Watts, the renowned Victorian painter. Chesterton’s style has been described as dealing with popular sayings, proverbs and allegories, and then turning them inside out. Basically, he follows this model by presenting the reputation of George Frederick Watts in this biography.
Watts was a great figure in English painting during the Victorian era. Chesterton begins by claiming Welsh roots for the painter, along with Celtic sentiments, but the theory is vague and frankly contradicted by the eventual location of the Watts museum, near Guilford in the all-English Home Counties.
In many ways, it’s easier to describe Watts by starting with what he wasn’t. She was not a Pre-Raphaelite, but she was probably sympathetic to many of the group’s artistic goals. He was not an impressionist, always preferring the classical subject, placed in the center and constantly illuminated. He wasn’t a modernist in any sense, but many of the images of him have a curiously modern feel to them. He may be closer to being an English symbolist, but that’s not what Chesterton thinks.
Watts was a romantic. He was an establishment figure who could also be said to be against the establishment. He received commissions from the state, often donating works for large projects, and painted the rich, famous, and significant. But he, too, spurned national honors, using the proceeds from his celebrity portraits to finance projects that represented the social conditions of his day. He was not a member of the Arts and Crafts movement, but his wife was, and he was clearly a supporter. Adjacent to the Watts museum is arguably Britain’s finest example of Arts and Crafts Celtic Revival architecture, Watts Chapel in Compton, which was essentially the project of his wife. We can return to Chesterton’s opening at this point to record the fact that Watts himself did not claim that this was linked to his own heritage.
Watts’ work is highly individualistic within a framework that at first glance might seem conventional. Chesterton, in his characteristic obfuscation, defines three fundamental characteristics of this work. “…first, skeptical idealism, the belief that abstract truths remained the main concerns of men when theology abandoned them; second, didactic simplicity, the claim to teach other men and assume one’s own worth and rectitude; third, cosmic utilitarianism, the regard of anything as art or philosophy perpetually with reference to a general good”. Apparently things like cosmic utilitarianism can be deduced directly from the visual image, although a modern reader of this biography might find this quite difficult.
Chesterton, as always, can’t resist moralizing on his own opinions. “So far the painful result would seem to be that whereas men in the earliest times said unscientific things with the vagueness of gossip and legend, they now say unscientific things with the simplicity and certainty of science.” Perhaps, as a writer, GK should have read this quote before writing the analysis just quoted. The author, however, occasionally deals with visual content. Watts had a tendency, perhaps a penchant for the human back. “The back is the most terrifying and mysterious thing in the universe: it is impossible to talk about it. It is the part of man of which he knows nothing; like a peripheral province forgotten by an emperor”
Chesterton describes some of Watts’ memorable work. He concentrates on portraiture and poetic and dreamlike works, such as Hope. What is missing is any description of the social commentary. But, after a hundred pages of embroidering the artist and his work with his own brand of neatness, Chesterton concludes: “And this brings me to my last word. From time to time Watts has failed. I am afraid it may be deduced from him magniloquent language that I have frequently, and in full awareness of my act, applied to this great man, who I believe all his work to be technically successful. It is evident that it is not. Because I think that often he hardly knew what he was doing ;I think you have been in the dark when the lines went wrong;that you have been even more in the dark and things went right.As I have already pointed out, the vague lines that your mere physical instinct would have you draw, have in them the curves of the Cosmos. His automatic manual action was, I think, certainly a revelation to others, certainly a revelation to himself. Standing in front of a dark canvas on a still night, he has drawn lines and something has happened. In such an hour the strange and splendid given sentence of the Psalm he has literally fulfilled it. He has moved forward by the word of meekness, truth and justice. And his right hand has taught him terrible things.” Not very talented, GF apparently got lucky, at least according to GK. One hopes the meeting was cordial.