Behind our current exhibition Formations, lies a slice of Watts history. Watts Contemporary Gallery curator, Gwen Hughes details the historical connections between Fiona Millais and Lucy Lutyens, their ancestors and the Wattses.

Formations brings together the works of Fiona Millais and Lucy Lutyens; two artists who draw inspiration from the landscape that surrounds them. Both artists' work have links to the history of the land; Fiona Millais's use of layering within her paintings comments on the way in which land has been shaped throughout history by previous generations. Lucy Lutyens's home and studio are based on a medieval farm which houses ancient burial grounds, and her sculptures are influenced by this connection to the land. There is, however, a historical connection which ties them both to Watts Gallery in an unusual way. There's a clue in their names.

Fiona Millais is the great-granddaughter of the Pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais. In conversation with Gwen, Fiona mentioned that his work - particularly Ophelia, was one of the first pieces of art that she was exposed to, and it made a significant impression on her. Lucy Lutyens, the great, great niece of architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, revealed that she feels a sense of him watching her and pushing her to make the best work she can, despite her feeling that he might not like her work much.

Although Fiona and Lucy's works are vastly different from their ancestors, there is still a connection between each pair. Fiona and John Everett Millais share the use of painting as a medium, and Lucy and Edwin Lutyens have both revolved their work around form and physical objects. Also of note are the ties between John Everett Millais and Edwin Lutyens with George Frederic Watts.

Watts and Sir John Everett Millais

G F Watts and John Everett Millais were the two leading portrait painters of Victorian England. That they were friends and influenced each other’s work is not a given but it seems that their mutual admiration was strong, and lasted over a number of years. On one occasion Millais described Watts’s portrait of Walter Crane as “sublime” and Watts in return was happy to paint Millais himself (in 1871).

It’s likely they first met in the late 1850s, when Watts and the Pre-Raphaelites were moving in the same circles. In 1857 Rossetti introduced Watts to Burne-Jones at Little Holland House and Watts was certainly familiar with Millais’s work, looking forward to seeing his painting at the Royal Academy summer exhibition that year.

As well as meeting at artistic events, in the early 1860s Watts and Millais were both members of the Moray Minstrels glee club, which met at Moray Lodge near Holland Park and also numbered the artists Valentine Prinsep and Lord Leighton among its members.

Millais gave Watts his painting “Stitch, Stitch, Stitch” (1876) and Watts wrote appreciatively: “My dear Millais – I cannot tell you how greatly I admire the picture you have sent me! You have never done anything better. I shall have it up in my studio as an example to follow. I feel proud of the possession.” He subsequently lent the painting for exhibitions of Millais’s work.

After Millais’s death in 1896, Watts continued to regard him in great esteem, telling Vanessa Stephen (later to be Vanessa Bell) who was on a visit to Limnerslease in 1903, that “Millais was more loved than anyone – he was so hearty and kind”.

Watts and Sir Edwin Lutyens

Lucy Lutyens is the great, great niece of architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. As Edwin Lutyens was a generation younger than G F Watts, contact between them was not as extensive as between Watts and Millais, but they certainly knew each other. In the years following his first Surrey house project (at Crooksbury near Farnham) in 1895, Lutyens went on to produce a string of Arts and Crafts buildings, many working in collaboration with garden designer Gertrude Jekyll and he would have been a familiar figure in local creative circles. The Lutyens family had a home in Thursley, only a few miles away, and G F would have known Charles Lutyens, Edwin’s artist father. Why Lutyens was not asked to undertake the design of Watts’s Gallery is a bit of a mystery. He would have seemed the obvious choice. Instead the commission went to a pupil of Lutyens, Christopher Hatton Turnor, whose parents lived locally.

On 2 April 1898, Mary Watts wrote in her diary that “In the afternoon, we went up so see Miss Jekyll in her new house [Munstead Wood near Godalming]. It is wonderfully simple and gives one a conventual medieval feeling – these new grey tinder coloured oak beams are my envy. Mr Lutyens explains that it is “English” oak… I wonder whether it will keep that velvety grey?” Munstead Wood has recently been acquired by the National Trust, and visitors should soon be able – like Mary Watts - to appreciate these timbers, which were silvered using a treatment of hot lime. Gertrude Jekyll also had the distinction of sitting for G F Watts as a model 'for arms'.

As a leading portrait painter of the day, G F Watts had, back in 1884, painted both Edith Villiers and her husband Robert Bulwer Lytton (a former Viceroy of India). Their daughter Emily Lytton (b.1874) married Edwin Lutyens in 1897.

Lutyens’s position as part of the artistic establishment (and his friendship with Princess Marie Louise) led to his being commissioned to design a 1:12 scale dolls’ house which was presented to Queen Mary in 1924 as a gift from the nation. It is now on display at Windsor Castle. This was not a toy but a showpiece to exhibit some 1,500 pieces of the best of British Art and Crafts of the 1920s. Among the items commissioned were eight miniature pots from the Compton Pottery, which would no doubt have delighted Mary Watts. She was also involved with the construction of the Compton Bridge, designed by Lutyens and built over the Pilgrim’s Way in 1931. Mary apparently insisted on the installation of the crosses as the price for building the bridge on the Watts estate.

See Formations: Fiona Millais and Lucy Lutyens at the Watts Contemporary Gallery, situated above the Visitor Centre. Admission is free, and all works are for sale. Until 29 October 2023.