Early career researcher Dr Nicole Cochrane explores the role of symbolism in G F Watts’s works.

Symbolism was a European cultural movement that spanned the visual arts, poetry, theatre, and fiction at the end of the nineteenth century (commonly known as the fin de siècle). Symbolist works were characterised by their desire to represent ideas rather than stories. The symbolists held great regard for the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, who exhibited their works alongside Symbolist painters in Paris. They also highly respected Watts, with works like Love and Life (c.1884-85) and Mammon (c.1884-85) appealing directly to the symbolist sensibility.

In my role as Early Career Researcher for the Collection Online project I have been investigating these previously unexplored links between Watts and the European symbolists and dialogue between these two artistic spheres. While Watts refused to label his works with one specific movement, once proclaiming ‘I paint ideas, not things’, many of his works closely mirrored symbolist developments and motifs.

Figures reoccurred in both Watts’s work and the symbolists such as Paolo and Francesca (Dante’s tragic doomed lovers) and the mythical musician Orpheus. Similarly, Watts’s work echoed many of the symbolists strong moral and spiritual concerns of contemporary society such as poverty, war, religion, and materialism. Many of Watts’s strongly symbolist works were donated to public collections like the Tate and museums in North America and Europe, showing that Watts believed the lessons they contained deserved to be shared with the public.

Love & Life is adopted by Tania Haskell.