Issue 35 autumn 2022 - Flipbook - Page 69
Watts Gallery
October 2022 Exhibitions
The Watts Story
George Frederic Watts OM, RA (1817 – 1904) was widely considered to be the greatest painter of
the Victorian era. A portraitist, sculptor, landscape painter and symbolist, Watts's work embodied the
most pressing themes and ideas of the time, earning him the title England's Michelangelo. Mary Watts
(née Fraser Tytler) (1849-1938) married G F Watts in 1886 beginning a strong artistic partnership.
Mary Watts was a renowned designer in her own right, founder of the Compton Pottery (1900) and
creator of Watts Chapel.
Featuring twelve portraits from Black is the New Black
and seven portraits from Watts’s Hall of Fame, the display
will re-examine the representation of celebrity, race, gender, class, power and empire, allowing a critical re-evaluation of Watts and explore what a Hall of Fame might
look like today.
Faces of Fame: G F Watts X Simon Frederick
27 September - 26 March 2023
This September, Watts Gallery – Artists’ Village will be
exhibiting a selection of photographs from Simon
Frederick’s portrait series Black is the New Black alongside paintings from G F Watts’s Hall of Fame. These
portraits have been loaned from the National Portrait
Gallery’s Collection as part of its National Skills Sharing
Partnership Programme.
This display has been created in partnership with the
National Portrait Gallery as part of their transformational
Inspiring People project which includes an extensive
programme of nationwide activities, funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund and Art Fund.
Today, the portraits of ‘greats’ as represented by G F
Watts’s Hall of Fame – nearly all of which depict white
male writers, politicians, and social reformers – raise
significant questions about those who Victorian art and
society celebrated. Simon Frederick’s Black is the
New Black uses the portrait series format to present an
assembly of celebrated contemporary Black Britons.
Exhibition included in admission.
To book please visit
www.wattsgallery.org.uk/whats-on/faces-of-fame/
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