ABSTRACT
G. F. Watts was bom in London and entered the Royal Academy Schools at the age of eighteen, ‘where he found the teaching slack and unhelpful’. The professors of art in modem times are at a great disadvantage. A precise definition of what is meant by the term Nature seems to be required, for it is understood to imply, when speaking of art, rather an assemblage of those conditions which are taken in by the perceptive faculties, and are rather limited to such of these as are taken in by the eye alone. Modem art is distinctly luxurious, and when earnest men would produce something of a higher character, just as some modem converts to Romanism sought to express deeply religious sentiments by producing the quaintness which was mainly the result of ignorance in the early Italian painters; mistaking manner for principle.
