ot months of summer he was hard at work in his London
studio, leaving for the country only for a few weeks during foggy
weather.

At the age of sixty-nine Watts married Miss Mary Fraser-Tytler, with
whom he journeyed to Egypt, painting there a study of the "Sphinx," one
of the cleverest of his landscapes. Three years after his return, he
settled at Limnerslease, Compton, in Surrey, where he took great
interest in the attempt to revive industrial art among the rural
population.

Twice, in 1885 and 1894, the artist refused, for private reasons, the
baronetcy that other artists had accepted. He lived henceforth and died
the untitled patriot and artist, George Frederick Watts.

II

THE MAN AND THE MESSENGER

Having given in the preceding pages the briefest possible outline of the
life of Watts as a man amongst men, we are now able to come to closer
quarters. He was essentially a messenger--a teacher, delivering to the
world, in such a manner that his genius and temperament made possible,
ideas which had found their place in his mind. He would have been the
first to admit that without these ideas he would be less than nothing.

If it were possible to bring together all the external acts of the
painter's life, his journeyings to and fro, his making and his losing
friends, we should have insufficient data to enable us to understand
Watts' message; his great ambitions, his constant failures, his intimate
experiences, his reflections and determinations--known to none but
himself--surely these, the internal life of Watts, are the real sources
of his message? True, he was in the midst of the nineteenth century,
breathing its atmosphere, familiar with the ideals of its great men,
doubting, questioning, and hoping with the rest. To him, as to many a
contemporary stoic, the world was in a certain sense an alien ground,
and mortal life was to be stoically endured and made the best of. It is
impossible to believe, however, that this inspiring and prophetic
painter reproduced and handed on merely that which his time and society
gave him. His day and his associates truly gave him much; the past and
his heredity made their contributions; but we must believe that the
purest gold was fired in the crucible of his inner experience, his joys
and his sufferings. In him was accomplished that great discovery which
the philosophers have called Pessimism; he not only saw in other men (as
depicted in his memorable canvas of 1849), but