01/09/16
Close Up &
Personal: Victorians & Their Photographs
Watts Gallery –
Artists’ Village
14 June – 6
November 2016
Watts Gallery was set up in 1904 to show off the work of
George Frederic Watts (1817-1904). A little over a decade ago, a Heritage
Lottery Fund enabled it to be restored and renovated and, just this year, the
east wing of Limnerslease, the house across the road in which Watts and his
wife Mary (1849-1938), also an artist, lived, has been opened to the public,
transformed into recreations of Watts’ and Mary’s studios. Just down the road,
the Arts and Crafts chapel, decorated with terracotta tiles made by locals
under Mary’s direction, adds to what is now referred to as the Watts Gallery –
Artists’ Village.
Alongside the 100 paintings by Watts, which are on permanent
display in the gallery, and the further works and archival materials in the
studios, another key component of Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village is its
collection of Victorian photography. This is formed predominantly from three
sources: the personal photographs of the Wattses; photographs by Frederick
Hollyer of Watts’ paintings; and the Rob Dickins Collection of Victorian
photographs and letters. The latter is named after the pop music promoter and
arts benefactor, who bought a unique archive of some 3,500 Victorian
photographs and 1,000 artists’ letters, collected by the renowned London art
dealer Jeremy Maas, at auction in 2007 and gifted it to the gallery. One or two
of these photographs have crept into each exhibition held at the gallery since
this date, but now it was felt to be time to host an exhibition devoted to the
photographs, looking at how Victorians collected and consumed the medium. In
addition to items from the collection, there are a few loans of Victorian
stereoscopy, from the collection of astronomer and Queen guitarist Dr Brian
May, completing the story of the Victorian compulsion for this new form of image
capturing. Visitors can enjoy a whole range of photographs encompassing and
illustrating the artistic, literary and social world that GF Watts inhabited
throughout his long career – a career that coincides almost exactly with the
Victorian era.
Read the rest of this essay here
Image:
Famous Four Generations, 1894
The Rob Dickins Collection
Watts Gallery Artists’ Village