Throughout his life George Frederic Watts was interested in the mythology of Greece and Rome.

Stories from ancient epic poems such as Homer’s Iliad and Ovid’s Metamorphoses inspired Watts while he was a sicky child in smoky London, a young man in Italy, and a professional artist in England.

We hold many of these mythological works, including paintings, sculptures and drawings. These subjects allowed George to explore many of the themes which interested him, such as life, death, love, change, and time. He used the characters and stories that were familiar to his audiences to share his vision of the world.

However, sometimes his meanings were confusing or difficult to understand, and viewers misunderstood what he was trying to communicate. He wrote to his patron Charles Rickards about his painting The Titans, that a critic should ‘not suppose there can be no meaning in a thing because he may not perceive it at the first glance.’