Court of Death

Painting height: 94 cm
Painting width: 61 cm
Frame height: 125 cm
Frame width: 94 cm

The Court of Death was one of Watts’s most ambitious symbolist works. It was influenced by Renaissance altarpieces. It shows the Angel of Death seated high on a throne. Before her people offer items no longer useful to them in the afterlife. A knight presents a sword and a nobleman gives a crown. Death also offers relief to a sick woman and a man with a physical disability. Death holds a baby in her lap, symbolic of the connection between life and death. Watts completed several versions of the composition, including a 14-feet high canvas, completed on his eighty-fifth birthday. This painting in the Watts Collection is a smaller oil study from the 1880s, when Watts finalised the composition.

Court of Death was one of Watts most ambitious and visually complex paintings. Originally titled the Angel of Death, it had been conceived as early as 1853 as decoration for a mortuary chapel for London’s paupers. Moved by the plight of those who would be interred in mass burials Watts wished to provide an artwork for their final resting place [1]. In this setting, the painting aimed to give dignity to all, regardless of their wealth or social position. Although the chapel was never built, Watts returned to the idea in the 1870s and continuing to produce versions and refine the composition up until his death.

The painting likely belonged to Watts’s never-realised ‘House of Life’ series, an ambitious mural cycle in which Watts aimed to combine religious and symbolist themes in order to show a universal language of human existence, which was never fully realised. The painting also belongs to a series of Watts works completed in the later decades of his life, known as the ‘cycle of Death’, which included The Messenger (COMWG.37, 1880-1885) and Death Crowning Innocence (COMWG2007.824, 1887), which portrayed Death as a kind and benevolent woman.

The painting depicted a complex symbolic programme. Death is shown high on a throne in the guise of a winged angel. In her lap she cradles an infant, symbolic of the close relationship between life and death. Her throne is described by Spielmann as ‘composed of architectural ruins denoting the perishability of all things human’ [2]. Her court before represent the various states of humanity. A nobleman in lavish robes presents a crown while beside him a knight presents his sword, symbolic of the futility of worldly possessions in death. A pale and sickly woman, modelled by May Prinsep (COMWG.88, 1867-1869), clings to Death’s robes, a beggar woman leaning on a cane, and a man with a physical disability all suggest the role of Death as someone who alleviates life’s struggles [3]. Death is flanked on either side by robed figures who represent Mystery and Silence. In two versions, one now at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Watts included a black male figure, stood behind the beggar woman. His pose was reminiscent of Wedgwood’s abolitionist seal ‘Am I Not a Brother and a Man?’, created around 1787 [4]. Mary’s subject catalogue locates this as the first completed study of the composition to 1881, but it is not known why this figure was removed from subsequent versions [5].

The visual scheme drew heavily from Renaissance altarpieces, particularly the adoration of the Madonna and child Jesus. John Ruskin (1819-1900) borrowed one version in 1864, and proclaimed it ‘the new Trionfo della Morte Madonna’, referencing the compositions Renaissance roots in the theme of the Triumph of Death [6]. Commenting on the Christian undertones of the painting, Charles Rickards (1812-1886) suggested the inclusion of a cross. Watts, who mistrusted organised religion, chose for the painting to present a secular view of religion, writing instead that he wished for the work to ‘appeal purely to human sympathies, without reference to creed or dogma of any kind’ [7]. In Court of Death, Watts aimed to create a secular mediation on the themes of life, death and regeneration through a universal symbolic language.

For the large version of Court of Death, now in the collection of the Tate, he employed a series of pulleys that dropped down into the floor of his studio, allowing the elderly Watts to work on the painting without ladders or scaffolds [8]. He completed at least six versions of the composition in various sizes, the Tate version being the largest.

Footnotes:

[1] Mary Seton Watts, The Annals of an Artists Life, Vol. I, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912), p.228

[2] Marion Harry Spielmann, ‘The Works of Mr George F. Watts, R.A., with a complete catalogue of his Pictures’, Pall Mall Gazette, Extra Numbers, 22 (1886), p.30

[3] Mary Seton Watts, Catalogue of Subject Pictures by G. F. Watts O.M. R.A., Vol. I, c.1912,p.30

[4] Sarah Thomas, Witnessing Slavery: Art and Travel in the Age of Abolition (London: Paul Mellon Centre, 2019)

[5] Mary Seton Watts, Catalogue of Subject Pictures by G. F. Watts O.M. R.A., Vol. I, c.1912, p.30

[6] Mary Seton Watts, The Annals of an Artists Life, Vol. I, (London: Macmillan and Co., 1912) p.219

[7] Ibid, p.307

[8] Veronica Franklin Gould, G.F. Watts: Last Great Victorian (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004), p.256

Text by Dr Nicole Cochrane