Destiny

Painting height: 213.4 cm
Painting width: 104 cm
Frame height: 246 cm
Frame width: 147 cm

Destiny; an allegorical subject featuring figure composition within a landscape; showing a full-length draped figure (Destiny) holding an open book standing on the seashore with an infant child meant to represent Humanity seated on a rock beneath. Despite its large scale, Destiny is one of Watts’s very last paintings. It was made in the final weeks of his life when he was eighty-seven years old. The recently-born, innocent child is newly arrived on the shore of life. The angel hovers behind with an open book, to record its future deeds. In this late work Watts revisits the themes of personal responsibility and God’s judgement, but now with a tangible sense of a Divine guardian presence

In her writings Mary provided a brief history of this work. In the catalogue Mary wrote after G.F. Watts she noted that it showed at the Royal Academy in 1905 and provided some insight into this work [1].  She wrote, “a design made during the last weeks of the painter’s life.  Begun at Limnerslease and carried forward during April and a part of May 1904” [2].  Here Mary notes that G.F. Watts started this work only months before his death in July 1904.

As with other works by Watts, such as Whence? Whither?, which centres on an infant representing humanity running out of the sea with open arms, Watts followed a Symbolist approach and represented humankind [3]. Mary Watts also noted these ideas in the edited volumes The Annals of an Artist’s Life. In volume one of this work Mary noted that this work would have been the conclusion of Watts’ planned but not completed series of paintings “The House of Life” which would have started with the work Chaos [4]. Additionally in the second volume of The Annals of an Artist’s Life, Mary confirmed this Symbolist interpretation of this work as representing humanity when she stated, “he [G.F. Watts] designed and almost completed the painting called ‘Destiny’ where again the child is found, but a little further up upon the shore of life; and the great angel waits behind with an open book ready for life’s record” [5].  As with Whence? Whither? here Watts presents humanity as just beginning as an infant with its future unwritten and completely ahead of it.

Another contemporary of Watts, John Ernest Phythiam, described this work in a similar manner.  In his biography of G.F. Watts wrote

In another picture, Destiny — the two hang together in the Limnerslease gallery — the child has passed a short distance inland, and already the dark sea begins to look remote. He is seated, and hovering over him, shadowing him with her garments, is Destiny, clothed in blue and scarlet and gold, and looking into the book of futurity. What is the future to be? [6]

Like Mary, Phythian here notes how the angel is over the child and noting that the future is unwritten.

Footnotes:

[1]    Mary Watts, Catalogue, page 39.

[2]    Mary Watts, Catalogue, page 39.

[3]   Mary Watts, Catalogue, page 39 and Hilary Underwood and Veronica Franklin Gould, “112. Destiny 1904,” The Vision of G F Watts (ed. Veronica Franklin Gould), page 88.

[4]   Mary Watts, The Annals of an Artist’s Life, Volume 1, page 105.

[5]   Mary Watts, The Annals of an Artist’s Life, Volume 2, page 319.

[6]   John Ernest Phythian, George Frederick Watts , page 98.

Text by Dr Ryan Nutting