Spirit of Christianity

Painting height: 91.4 cm
Painting width: 53.3 cm

Watts was a religious man but did not support strong organised religion. The painting was known by several names including The Sacred Heart and Dedicated to All the Churches. It depicted a woman, known as the Genius of Religion, floating upon a cloud. Beneath her robes she shields a group of small babies, known as putti, huddle together for shelter. Watts did not consider it a strongly religious painting. He described it instead as ‘the symbol of compassionate tenderness’. The composition was highly influenced by Renaissance altarpieces, particularly images of the Madonna and Child, and the colour palette of reds, blues and golds reflects this.

Many of G F Watts’s paintings expressed a spirituality that was divorced from strict religious dogma. Spirit of Christianity is perhaps Watts’s greatest expression of his faith as a non-denominational and symbolic entity. Of the painting Watts said: ‘I don’t think it can be fairly called a religious picture, certainly not a doctrinally religious picture’ [1]. The painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1875 as Dedicated to All Churches, further suggesting its meaning as encompassing the divine teachings of love and charity, free of strict adherence to doctrine.

The main figure, known as the Genius of Religion, is presented as a woman floating atop a cloud. She wears heavy red robes lined with green, her right arm stretched out in a gesture of kindness. Below her she shields a group of naked putti figures in her robes who huddle closely together. In both the Watts Collection and Tate versions of the composition the figures float in a cloud above a rocky landscape suggesting the otherworldly and symbolic meaning of the composition. In describing their symbolic role, Watts wrote:

In all my efforts in dealing with emblems and symbols my object is to address the imagination from the highest plane of thought. The Spirit of Christianity should suggest the divine spirit of the teaching, not the personality of the Teacher. Emanating from above it does not look upwards, but is addressed to humanity and the Churches [2].

The painting drew strong inspiration of religious art, particularly images of the Madonna and Child, in its treatment of the material draped figure and naked child. The oval shape of the composition and the strong light around the head of Genius link it to religious imagery of saints. The leitmotif of children sheltered below the sweeping folds of drapery or sheltered by a maternal figure is one which is repeated in Watts’s works such as Court of Death (COMWG.81, 1871-1902) , Destiny (COMWG.133, 1904). Infants served important symbolic roles in Watts’s symbolist works. Infants as symbols of innocence were frequent in Watt’s work, with Mary noting: ‘the little child is used as an expression of his [Watts’s] thought in a manner which is entirely his own’ [3].

On these themes it is possible to see The Spirit of Christianity and Evolution (COMWG.35, 1898) together as an informal pair, expressing both the symbolic forms of the primordial and spiritual mother as a protector of humanity.

Watts painted four versions of the work. Mary Seton Watts records that the earliest version was deemed too small a composition which ‘did not suit the further development of Mr Watts’s ideas’ [4]. This version did not include the landscape at the bottom and enveloped the figures in cloud. Watts presented this version by request to Nottingham Castle art gallery by his executors in 1904. In 1875 Watts painted another small version of the composition for his patron Charles H Rickards, recording that one potential title had been ‘The Sacred Heart’ [5]. In 1998 it was acquired by the Australian art collector John Schaeffer who exhibited it in Australia and the United States [6]. It was sold at auction in 2018 to a private collection. The largest, which presented the Genius in deep red robes was included in Watts’s Tate Gift in 1897.

Footnotes:

[1] Mary Seton Watts, Catalogue of Subject Pictures by G. F. Watts O.M. R.A., Vol. I, c.1912, p. 135.

[2] ibid, p. 136.

[3] ibid, p.133.

[4] ibid, p.136.

[5] Correspondence with C.H. Rickards, National Portrait Gallery, London, 1873-1875.

[6] Richard Beresford, Victorian Visions: Nineteenth Century Art from the John Schaeffer Collection (Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2010), pp. 64-5.

Explore:

Study for The Spirit of Christianity [COMWG2006.8]

Text by Dr Nicole Cochrane