ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the means by which G. F. Watts tried to arm himself against the view that portraiture is a kind of performance in which the painter identifies himself with technical skill. It examines the strategies he put in place to resist this model, a model he associated with the need to fuse the artist and sitter through the exercise of virtuosity as a double sign of status. The chapter considers how he intended to eliminate the traditional signs and marks of glamorous identity, and argues that the Wattsian portrait format, most noticeable in the series of works now called the Hall of Fame, was an attempt to rescue experience from what he saw as the ethical failure of modern portraiture, which, in effect, equated identity with a synthesizing formula. Watts was certainly conscious of a need to address the identity of modern portraiture, and to assess its function in Victorian society.
