The studios of celebrated artist, G. F. Watts and his wife Mary have been reopened. Rosanna Greenstreet talks to Perdita Hunt, director of the Watts Gallery
The renovated Watts Studio at Linnerlease
It’s one of Surrey’s best-loved gems. Now Watts Gallery Artists’ Village, tucked away in Compton, near Guildford, is shining more brightly than ever. The studios of George Frederic Watts, one of the great Victorian artists, and his wife – the potter and designer, Mary – have been painstakingly restored and opened to the public.
Born in 1817, Watts was the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Much admired in his day, he was given the soubriquet of England’s Michelangelo by fellow artist Lord Leighton, his output including allegorical pictures such as Hope – said to have inspired both Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama – enormous sculptures such as Physical Energy, which stands in Kensington Gardens, and portraits of famous people, like Gladstone.
Watts’s first wife was the actress Ellen Terry, but the marriage broke down within a year. Then, in 1886, he married Mary Seton Fraser-Tytler in Epsom and theirs was a happy union. The couple moved to Compton in the early 1890s, having commissioned Limnerslease – a house with studios – from Arts & Crafts architect Ernest George.
Both believed that art was transformative and should be available to all, to which end Watts built a gallery for his work which opened to the public on 1 April 1904. When he died three months later, Mary – who would survive him by 34 years – appointed herself guardian of his legacy, building an additional gallery for his paintings and a print studio for copies of his work.
Alexander Creswell's painting of the renovated studio of GK Watts
My own introduction to what was then known as the Watts Memorial Gallery came in July 1985, on a visit with my father. By then it had fallen into disrepair, and Wilfrid Blunt – curator since 1959, author of an irreverent Watts biography called England’s Michelangelo and brother of Anthony, the famous spy – was still very much a presence, although he had officially retired in 1983. My father recorded our visit in his diary:
“Blunt glared at us, leaning on two sticks. There were handwritten notices: ‘Hikers leave your packs outside.’ A second notice said testily ‘Following repeated questions, Watts was not a pre-Raphaelite’. Inside, the gallery cat, inflated as a bolster, sleeps on the hot air ducts untroubled by the feet of the rather few visitors: while another ancient notice reflects the vexed spirit of a man of culture facing the tedious responsibilities of running a public gallery – ‘Please don’t touch this table because it stops the clock.’"
When current director Perdita Hunt took over in 2004, Blunt and his yellowing notices were long gone and the gallery was in a terrible state.
“Being a solid concrete building, it was probably the coldest place on earth: you had to come to work wearing ski gear under your dress!” she recalls. “There was one loo, and when it rained we had to put out buckets and water would build up in one corner like a paddling pool. We had few visitors, but those people that did know the gallery loved it to death – literally: they didn’t want any change. But we either had to save it or lose it for ever.”
And so the transformation into Watts Gallery Artists’ Village began. Perdita co-ordinated a campaign to raise £11m for restoration as part of a Heritage Lottery funded project, and today the place attracts 60,000 visitors each year and makes a significant contribution to the local economy. There is an extensive events programme and, in keeping with George and Mary’s belief that art is for all, the gallery offers artist-led workshops for people with mental health issues and those at risk of offending.
Watts Gallery Artists Village
Initially, the restoration of Limnerslease was not part of the plan because the house, which had been divided into two, was owned privately. In 2011, however, when both owners expressed a desire to sell, Perdita took action.
“Limnerslease was the last piece of the jigsaw. The studios are the east wing of the house, and then there is the house itself. After the rescue of the gallery, there just weren’t any spare funds to start saving the house. But we needed to ensure that it wasn’t sold back onto the private market and lost from view.”
Thankfully, four lenders stepped in and secured Limnerslease until the Watts Gallery Trust, aided by a further grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund, was in a position to raise the £5.2m needed for the purchase of the house and restoration of the studios. The house will require many more millions before work is complete, but the studios will be ready for viewing on January 26. With paint pigments sourced from George’s brushes and the creation of an authentic smell known as ‘eau de Watts’, visitors are intended to feel that the artist has just folded his canvas.
“We own Watts’s studio furniture, such as his steps, his easels and the table with the drawer in which he kept his brushes,” says Perdita. “We even have his skeleton cupboard, though not the human skeleton itself – just the cupboard! They were all languishing in store, but now we can put them back. Thanks to photographs taken by the Watts estate manager, we know where everything was situated and also which works Watts had in there.
The Court of Death by G F Watts, loaned by the Tate
“The most exciting thing is that his last major work, The Court of Death, has been loaned to us by the Tate. He had it in his studio on a pulley system, so that he could lower the vast canvas down below floor level and thus reach the top of the painting. That has real wow factor.”
Mary’s studio, meanwhile, is in what she referred to as the drawing room. Here she would hold evening pottery classes for locals and work on the interior screens of the Watts Chapel, the Arts & Crafts masterpiece which she designed and made with the help of the community. The red brick Grade I listed building stands in nearby Compton cemetery, close to George and Mary’s graves.
“Mary’s studio is a very important part of the restoration. One of the drivers for securing the studios was to have space to celebrate Mary, whose light has been slightly under a bushel. Her collection includes a lovely, 12-panel altarpiece from the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot – we’re showing nine panels along three sides of the Mary Watts gallery. This, together with a bronze triptych she made in memory of her nephew who died in a riding accident, really shows that she was an artist in her own right.”
Back in 1985 my father added a postscript to his diary entry:
“Years ago a friend, leaving the gallery near closing time, was asked by the custodian at the door if there was anyone else still in it. ‘Only an old lady in a red dress,’ said my friend. ‘Oh, that will be the ghost of Mrs Watts, the painter’s wife, replied the custodian. ‘So I can lock up now.’“
Now, with the opening of her studio and the display of her fine work, Mary Watts is to become far more than just the spectre at her husband’s feast.
You can see what's on at the Watts gallery here
