Artwork Title: Violet Lindsay

Violet Lindsay, 1879

George Frederic Watts

Watts was one of the most celebrated British artists of the Victorian age, famous for his range of subjects across social realism and portraiture. This painting is one of his most important works remaining in private hands. Violet Lindsay sat for the portrait around 1879, aged about 23. In 1882, she married Henry Manners, later Marquis of Granby and Duke of Rutland. She was a member of the intellectual circle known as the Souls, and an artist in her own right. She was the mother of the socialite Lady Diana Cooper. The portrait, which was widely exhibited and admired in Watts’s lifetime, now joins the collection of the Watts Gallery, the museum established by the artist in 1904. [https://www.artfund.org/supporting-museums/art-weve-helped-buy/artwork/13483/portrait-of-violet-lindsay] Regarded as one of the artist’s most important portraits, this celebrated painting has been acquired by the Watts Gallery just in time for the artist’s bicentenary celebrations in 2017. Watts painted Violet Lindsay on several occasions but this is considered the prime version, which the artist kept to ensure that it would be available for public exhibition around the world. Inspired by the acquisition, John Julius Norwich (a prominent historian and Lindsay’s grandson) has donated over 40 of Lindsay’s own drawings – she was a respected portrait artist in her own right. [https://www.apollo-magazine.com/acquisitions-of-the-month-november-2016/] ...It is then but a step to a full-blown symbolist image such as the wonderful portrait of the artist Violet Lindsay, where the freely painted head and fantastic landscape background suggest the sitter's tempestuous spirit. [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3625393/A-great-painter-restored.html]
Uploaded on Dec 29, 2017 by Suzan Hamer

Arthur is a
Digital Museum