Under a Dry Arch

Painting height: 137 cm
Painting width: 101.5 cm
Frame height: 163 cm
Frame width: 129 cm

The most brutal depiction of Watts’s four social paintings of the late 1840s is Under a Dry Arch, his most direct response to the poverty that was evident in London at this time. A Times article of 1852 exclaimed: ‘Does it not appear at first sight a strange result of the terrible statistics of society, that upon an average 1 person out of 20 of this luxurious metropolis is everyday destitute of food and employment, and every night without a place for shelter or repose?’ Here is the face of the poor, not the sentimentalised genre depictions that graced the walls of the Royal Academy. The imagery of Watts’s painting is closer to the graphic journalism that developed in the 1840s, a severe Hogarthianism that he was later to reject but understood its value. Such a picture, he wrote, ‘like my old woman under the archway … has no beauty but it has purpose. It, I hope, arouses pity for human refuse.

Under the Dry Arch is another of the four works Watts completed between 1848 and 1850 (after he returned from an extended stay in Italy) which focuses on contemporary social issues including Found Drowned (COMWG.161, 184-1850), Irish Famine (COMWG.132, 1848-1850), and Song of the Shirt (COMWG.128, 1850). This work directly addresses the idea of poverty within society. In the catalogue of G.F. Watts’ work completed after his death Mary Watts provided a few details on this work. She wrote, “painted at the studio in Charles Street with three others all striking the same chord; sympathy with human misery” [1]. With this short description Mary confirmed that this work belongs in this group of four paintings, as well as where G.F. Watts completed this work and the subject of this work- the underclasses of society.

        In his biography of Watts written in 1903 Hugh Macmillan provides a contemporary reaction to this work.  He wrote,

Watts must have been in one of his darkest moods of moralising, when he painted an old woman seeking shelter under a dry arch at night from the pitiless drenching rain, increasing the gloom of the London streets. She had no other home to go to, no other bed on which to lie. The situation is the acme of human desolation, and Watts declared that he painted the picture with the avowed object of ‘arousing pity for human refuse.’ Many cases of a similar kind are found nightly in the streets of London, and the pre-occupied world heeds them not, till the artist and the poet bring them before it in forms that compel attention, and so prepare the way for some remedy [2].

Within this text Macmillan encapsulates the ideas that Watts depicted in this work. Macmillan specifically notes how Watts captured the plight of the homeless and the underclasses of London through the depiction of this woman sheltering under this arch. Moreover, Macmillan also related the figure in the painting to the homeless and poor in London and praises Watts for raising this issue.

        Contemporary scholars of Watts also how this sought to represent the poor of London.  Both Ward and Bills note that Watts painted these four social works after he returned from Italy and how they represent his dismay at the poverty he noticed in London [3]. She goes on to describe how Watts changed this work to represent these peoples. She wrote:

perhaps his most powerful social realist painting [Under a Dry Arch], shows that the work was originally conceived as a portrait of a mother wither her children huddling for shelter under a bridge; in the final painting Watts has reduced this group to one sole figure, accentuating the isolation and abandonment he saw in his experience of London’s poor [4].

Like Macmillan above, here Ward notes how Watts sought to use this work to raise awareness of the poor in London. Additionally, Bills identifies this bridge as Blackfriars Bridge in London with St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background which are both places contemporary viewers of this work would have also recognized as landmarks in London [5]. Therefore, Bills notes that Watts directly addressed the social issues of London during this period.

Footnotes:

[1]    Mary Watts, Catalogue of Works by G.F. Watts, page 153.

[2]    Hugh Macmillan, The Life-work of George Frederick Watts, R.A., pages 217-218.

[3]   Chloe Ward, The Drawings of G.F. Watts, page 5;  Mark Bills, “15. Under a Dry Arch,” G.F. Watts Victorian Visionary (ed. Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant), page 115.

[4]   Chloe Ward, The Drawings of G.F. Watts, page 5.

[5]   Mark Bills, “15. Under a Dry Arch,” G.F. Watts Victorian Visionary (ed. Mark Bills and Barbara Bryant), page 117.

Text by Dr Ryan Nutting