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"I paint ideas, not things."
George Frederic Watts OM RA (London, 23 Feb. 1817 – 1 July 1904); English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement.
Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
Watts was born in Marylebone, London on the birthday of George Frederic Handel (after whom he was named), to the second wife of a poor piano-maker. Delicate in health and with his mother dying while he was still young, he was home-schooled by his father in a conservative interpretation of Christianity as well as via the classics such as the Iliad. The former put him off conventional religion for life, whilst the latter was a continual influence on his art. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Frederic_Watts) undefined