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54
THE ALL PERVADING
1890
GEORGE
FREDERICK WATTS, O.M., R.A.
1817 - 1904
Red
chalk on discoloured cream paper, 64 x 44 (25.25 x 17.25)
Signed
and dated, G.F.WATTS Dec. (?) 1890 (lower left, in red).
Provenance:
Anon sale, Christie's 26 April 1935 (81, as The Recording
Angel, with another) bought Meatyard for 4gns.; Cecil
French.
The
hooded, winged angel holds an instrument in its right hand
with which it is writing on a scroll which apparently rests
upon a globe in its lap. It holds the scroll with its left
hand. The angel floats against an empty background and the
composition forms a mandorla (almond) or elongated ovoid,
a shape traditionally associated with Christ in Glory.
According
to Watts, in the catalogue introduction to his exhibition
at the New Gallery, 1896/7, "The figure with the globe
of the systems may be called the spirit that pervades the
immeasurable expanse." In his notes on the Tate painting
(see below), 129 in the New Gallery show, he describes it
as "The All-Pervading Spirit of the Universe represented
as a winged figure, seated, holding in her lap the "Globe
of the Systems." His widow recalled, in G.F.Watts, 1912,
vol.2, p.104/5, that the conception was inspired by his observation
of a chandelier in his studio.
54
has also been known traditionally as The Recording Angel
a subject which appears to have been conceived during
his honeymoon in 1887, but a sketch for The Recording Angel
(60.9 x 25.4) from 1888, in The Watts Gallery, Compton, is
significantly different in composition; as it was a painting
he loved and, indeed, kept beside his bed, it must be assumed
that it is the definitive version of the subject.
The
Cecil French drawing is far closer to The All Pervading,
1887-90, an oil, (162.6 x 109.2) presented to the Tate Gallery
by Watts in 1899. However, the angel in the Tate painting
is simply observing the globe which it holds in its hands
and has no scroll and therefore this drawing may be seen as
a composite of the two subjects.
Although
Watts was a devotee of Venetian painting, particularly Titian
and, later, Tintoretto, the inspiration for the modelling
and monumentality of this composition must be Michaelangelo's
Sistine chapel Prophets and Sibyls. He had seen the
chapel ceiling as early as 1844, when he visited Rome with
Lord Holland, and it created a lasting impression. Julia Cartwright
recorded in The Art Journal, 1896, that among the pictures
in the drawing room of his house, Limnerslease, which he took
in 1891, were autotypes of Michaelangelo's Sibyls.
Watts
painted a small version of The All Pervading for the
altar of the mortuary chapel at Compton, Surrey, where he
lived, in April 1904.
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