Slumber of the Ages

Painting height: 106.7 cm
Painting width: 94 cm
Frame height: 146 cm
Frame width: 122 cm

The motif of a mother cradling a small child was one which Watts returned to several times. In Slumber of the Ages Watts returned to this theme to create a symbolist work. A woman slumps dramatically, her neck craning. It is uncertain whether she sleeps or if her pale complexion and uncomfortable neck suggest she is dead. In her lap sits a child who stares out awake and alert. Watts described the painting as: ‘a mighty mother, with man, the child upon her lap, growing conscious knowledge himself and his place in the scheme of creation. The composition was one which Watts revisited for over fifty years, causing Mary Seton Watts to describe it as a prime example of ‘the growth of the artist’s own power of imaginative vision’.

The composition for Slumber of the Ages originated in a fresco painted by Watts in the 1850s for Little Holland House. Humanity in the Lap of Earth was painted as part of the fresco decoration of the Dining Room and presented a bright painting in blues and greens of a beautiful woman cradling a child in her lap (now in the collection of Leighton House Museum). The flowers in her hair and collected in her lap indicate her role as Earth. The child, alert and staring out the composition represented humanity. This early work displayed many of the symbolist themes Watts would come to be known for in his later works, particularly the use of allegory in his figures. In 1878 the fresco was removed along with all of Watts’s frescos and framed separately. It was given to Mrs Emilie Russell Barrington, who considered it to be ‘the most beautiful of these wall paintings’ [1].

In 1887 Watts revisited the theme, adapting it to a strong symbolist composition, titled Peace and Goodwill (COMWG.2, 1887). In it the mother figure becomes an outcast queen, exhausted and collapsed in sleep. Where Humanity in the Lap of Earth was a symbol of maternal comfort, Peace and Goodwill instead portrays the uncertainty of many of Watts’s later paintings as she ‘turns wearily towards a streak of light which may mean the dawn of better things [2]. This work was perhaps a reaction against the languorous and sensual sleeping beauties of his contemporaries like Sir Frederic Leighton, instead imbuing sleep with a deeper symbolic meaning.

Finally, in 1898 Watts would once again return to the image of the mother and child. Slumber of the Ages was a strong departure from the two earlier compositions, whilst also synthesising themes from both. The child is almost an exact copy of the one depicted in Humanity in the Lap of Earth. The mother figure, here given an ambiguous maternal role appears asleep similarly to that of the outcast Queen in Peace and Goodwill. However, as noted in the catalogue entry in Bill and Bryant’s G F Watts: Victorian Visionary, her pale skin and lifeless, almost unnatural pose, suggests a more sinister undercurrent [3]. Watts described the symbolist meaning of the work thus:

all such pictures are symbolic. They do not represent fact, but are forms used to suggest ideas, as notes in music or as gestures of an actor. In this picture the great stretches of time, since the earth ceased to be a formless mass, are represented as a mighty mother, with man, the child upon her lap, growing to conscious knowledge of himself and his place in the scheme of his creation [4].

Slumber of the Ages contains many motifs that would reoccur throughout Watts’s symbolist paintings. Small children and infants were often used by Watts as symbols of humanity, described by Mary Seton Watts as being ‘an expression of thought in a manner which is entirely his own’[5]. Similarly, the symbolic maternal figure as a nurturer and protector appears in several works such as the Spirit of Christianity (COMWG.122, 1873-1875). The use of a bold red sun, ambiguous in its placement of sunrise or sunset, was often repeated in Watts’s works to suggest either hopefulness or hopelessness and left open for viewer interpretation. These can be seen in A Dedication (COMWG.157, 1898-1899) and Court of Death (COMWG.81, c. 1870-1902).

One of Watts last completed artworks, Slumber of the Ages was exhibited widely in 1901, before Watts’s death, including at the New Gallery and Watts retrospectives in Manchester and Nottingham and memorial exhibitions of 1905. One favourable critic in 1901 praised its aesthetic form, saying: ‘Dignified in manner, the picture is invested likewise with individuality as regards chromatic treatment’ [6].

Footnotes:

[1] Mrs (Emilie) Russell Barrington, G.F. Watts: Reminisces (London, 1905), p.99.

[2] Mary Seton Watts, Catalogue of Subject Pictures by G. F. Watts O.M. R.A., Vol. I, c.1912, p.118.

[3] Mark Bills & Barbara Bryant, G. F. Watts Victorian Visionary: Highlights from the Watts Gallery Collection (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2008), p.269.

[4] Catalogue of Pictures by G F Watts, The Picture Gallery, Compton Lane, (1904), pp.5-6.

[5] Mary Seton Watts, Catalogue of Subject Pictures by G. F. Watts O.M. R.A., Vol. I, c.1912, p.133.

[6] Morning Post, 22 April 1901. Clippings volume, Watts Gallery Archive.

Text by Dr Nicole Cochrane