Abstract
This piece focuses on Mary Watts’s (1849–1938) gesso ceiling designs at her Surrey studio-home ‘Limnerslease’, showing how she developed a unique symbolic iconography that celebrates cultural diversity and divinity in its widest sense. It uses her largely unpublished diaries to shed light on her views on John Ruskin (1819–1900), religion, spirituality and aesthetics, offering insight into an understudied Arts and Crafts masterpiece that preceded her celebrated Watts Chapel, Guildford.
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Notes
- 1.
Mary Watts, from Diaries of Mary Seton Watts held at Compton: Watts Gallery Archives [COMWG2008.4, MSW/1–10]: 23 August, 15 April 1893; 23 March 1891. Hereafter by dates.
- 2.
Watts: 14 February 1898.
- 3.
Watts: 24 March 1891.
- 4.
John Ruskin, The Complete Works of John Ruskin, Library Edition, edited by E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–1912), Vol. 35, p. 296. All other references are to the Library Edition and are given by volume and page number in the text, for example (xv.149).
- 5.
Watts: 13 January 1891. ‘Signor’ was how Mary affectionately referred to G.F. Watts.
- 6.
Watts: 20 January, 10 February 1891.
- 7.
Watts: 25 January 1891.
- 8.
Mary Watts, The Word in the Pattern: A Key to the Symbols on the Walls of the Chapel at Compton (London: Wm. H. Ward and Co., 1905), p.3.
- 9.
Watts: 29 October 1893.
- 10.
See Catherine Hilary, ‘Mary Watts’s Ceiling Decoration at Limnerslease’ in Mark Bills, ed. An Artists’ Village: G. F. Watts and Mary Watts at Compton (London: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd., 2011), pp. 159–160.
- 11.
Watts: 11 May, 18 July 1891.
- 12.
Watts: 17 April 1891.
- 13.
George Watts quoted in Mary Watts, George Frederic Watts: The Annals of An Artist’s Life (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912), Vol. I, pp. 15–16, and Watts: 27 January 1893.
- 14.
Watts: 13 March 1887.
- 15.
Watts: 12 March 1891.
Bibliography
Blunt, Wilfrid. England’s Michelangelo: A Biography of George Frederic Watts. London: Columbus Books Ltd., 1989.
Gilbert, Sandra, and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.
Hilary, Catherine. ‘Mary Watts’s Ceiling Decoration at Limnerslease’ in Mark Bills, ed. An Artists’ Village: G. F. Watts and Mary Watts at Compton. London: Philip Wilson Publishers Ltd, 2011, pp. 157–162.
Ruskin, John. The Complete Works of John Ruskin, eds. E. T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, 39 vols. (London: George Allen, 1903–1912).
Watts, Mary. George Frederic Watts: The Annals of An Artist’s Life [Vols 1–3]. London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1912.
———. The Diaries of Mary Seton Watts. Compton: Watts Gallery Archives [COMWG2008.4, MSW/1–10], 1870–1886, 1887, 1891, 1893, 1896, 1898, 1902, 1904, 1906–1908.
———. The Word in the Pattern: A Key to the Symbols on the Walls of the Chapel at Compton. London: Wm. H. Ward and Co., 1905.
Internet Sources
Internet source accessed in June 2022 https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/
——— ‘Women and the Vote: Last Night’s Meeting’, Surrey Advertiser (29 November 1913).
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Rose, L.E. (2023). A World Without Ceiling: Mary Watts’ ‘Language of Symbols’ at Limnerslease. In: Beaumont, S., Thiele, M.E. (eds) John Ruskin, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Religious Imagination. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-21554-4_9
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