ABSTRACT
The father of G. F. Watts, having failed in his ambition to invent an instrument that would combine wind and string, transferred his hopes of fame to his son, who from an early age was weighed down by the sense of an unfulfilled mission. Through the Hollands he met many persons who were willing to sit to him, but to portray actual human beings seemed to him unworthy of an idealist. A school of English historical painters was being formed, under the patronage of the Prince Consort, and Watts hoped to find his life’s work in painting large heroic figures from our past. The Hollands wearying of Watts, their duty was taken over by the wife of an Indian Civil Servant, Mrs. Prinsep, who built Watts up as a great genius, and after nursing and shepherding him for twenty years relinquished him to a Mrs. Barrington, herself in due course to be replaced by his second wife.
