A Dedication also known as ‘To all those who love the beautiful and mourn over the senseless and cruel destruction of bird life and beauty’

Painting height: 137.2 cm
Painting width: 71 cm
Frame height: 168 cm
Frame width: 102 cm

In Victorian Britain the fashion for using bird feathers to decorate clothing had a negative impact on the population of native wildlife. Watts cared deeply for the protection of bird life in Britain and was an early supporter for the charity Society for the Protection of Birds. A Dedication was his symbolic portrayal of the negative effects of the declining population of Britain’s native birds but also how this reflected the moral failings of Victorian society. It depicts an angel standing before a sunset wearing deep blue robes. They hold their head in her hands as they weep. Before them stands an alter covered in the brightly coloured feathers of deceased birds. The alter is carved with a satyr, a woodland spirit from Greek mythology, suggesting the birds have been killed for frivolous means.

A Dedication, also known as the Mourning Angel or Shuddering Angel, was a strong moral statement by Watts on the contemporary issue of Britain’s declining bird population. The trend of bird feathers in Victorian fashion and millinery increased throughout the nineteenth century, and by the 1890s several species of British bird, such as the great crested grebe, were hunted to near extinction [1].

Watts and many of his circle were prominent campaigners for the protection of nature and wildlife. John Ruskin (1819-1900) was a founder-member of the Plumage League, who campaigned against the feather trade, while Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) was first president of the conservation group the Selborne Society. Watts himself was elected an associate for the Society for the Protection of Birds (which would gain Royal Charter, becoming the RSPB, in 1904), in the 1890s. These groups were part of a wider movement at the end of the nineteenth century towards nature conservation which included the establishment of the National Trust in 1895 [2]. The paintings subtitle ‘To all those who love the beautiful and mourn over the senseless and cruel destruction of bird life and beauty’, is a strong proclamation of its social and symbolic call to those who supported such causes.

A Dedication had clear social and emotional relevance for the Society for the Protection of Birds, who noted of the painting in their Annual Report for 1897 that, ‘this conception may safely be said to forcibly represent the feeling of the society with regard to the trade in bird feathers’[3]. Likewise, Watts had a strong moral opposition to the wearing of feathers; one anecdote records how he ‘ruthlessly tore off the opulent ostrich feather’ from the hat of Lillie Langtry (1853-1929) when she sat for her portrait (COMWG.43, 1880) in the 1870s [4]. For Watts the beauty of a bird’s wing was a reflection of his faith in God’s creation, with Mary Seton Watts (1849-1938) recording in her diary in 1898 he said: ‘when I look at that little bird’s wing […] & see the exquisite adaption of every bit of it to its purpose, I know that that same care about everything should be the religion of our life. That is what I call the Love of God’ [5].

The painting depicts an angel, their head bowed in their hands in a gesture of mourning. They weep over a pagan alter, carved with the image of a satyr, a woodland spirit in ancient mythology associated with drunken revelry and frivolity. The angel’s strong wings which divide the canvas symmetrically are mirrored by the collection of brightly coloured feathers strewn across the alter. Behind them a setting sun, a ‘solemn aureole’ steeps the painting in a rich glow of twilight [6]. According to Wilfred Blunt, Watts’s adopted daughter Lilian Chapman had been the model for the painting, however the figure looms largely genderless, a symbol of the collective spiritual grief caused by senseless killing.

Birds, particularly the death of birds, were potent symbols in Watts art. Mary Watts records how, in his childhood, Watt tamed a sparrow ‘so completely that it perched on his head as he lay in bed, ate from his plate, and was a cheerful and much beloved companion’. He accidentally caused the death of the bird. The experience left a lasting trauma, recounting ‘I feel the sorrow as keenly today as if it happened yesterday’ [7]. Birds serve symbolic purposes in Watts’s paintings, often as symbols of innocence and needless destruction, a leitmotif repeated in the paintings Wounded Heron (COMWG.64, 1837) and The Minotaur (COMWG.2008.149, 1885). To Watts, Britain’s lack of care for bird populations was symptomatic of a wider culture of moral and spiritual failings. In this way the painting was connected to wider symbolist trends of the late nineteenth century. Angels were common motifs for symbolist painters, particular their association with the soul and as figures of innocence [8].

Initial reaction to the painting when exhibited was mixed, with some dismissing its subject. A writer in The Times exclaimed that its moral message may be lost on those it wished to move, that ‘some of them [ladies who wear feathers in their hats] will only smile when they find a great artist taking the trouble to paint a majestic angel’[9]. Despite this, the paintings strong moral message attracted its use as a symbol of protest and activism. It was used by the Society for the Protection of Birds who admired its moral message as a campaign image for the leaflet Trade in Bird Feathers and later, in 1910 for an RSPCA magazine the Animal World [10]. It was also used as the frontispiece for Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s anti-imperialist Satan’s Absolved (1899), who named Watts as the ‘first of living painters’ with whom he had spent ‘many emotional hours in high communings on Life and Death and the tragic Beauty of the world’, in the book’s Preface [11].

Footnotes

[1] Michael Shrubb, Feasting, Fowling and Feathers: A History of the Exploitation of Wild Birds (London: Bloomsbury, 2013)

[2] Jennifer Jenkins & Patrick James, From Acorn to Oak Tree: The Growth of the National Trust 1895-1994 (New York: Macmillan, 1994)

[3] Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Seventh Annual Report, 1897, p. 9

[4] Lillie Langtry, Days I Knew: An Autobiography (London; Hutchinson & Co, 1925), p. 58

[5] Mary Seton Watts Diary, 14 January 1898. Desna Greenhow (ed.) The Diary of Mary Seton Watts, 1887-1904 (London: Lund Humphries, 2016), p. 180

[6] Art Journal, 1899, p. 186

[7] Mary Seton Watts, The Annals of an Artists Life, Vol. I, (London: Macmillan & Co., 1912), p. 13

[8] Philippe Jullian, The Symbolists (London: Phaidon, 1973), p. 49

[9] The Times, 22 April 1899, p. 4

[10] J. Keri Cronin, Art for Animals: Visual Culture of Animal Advocacy 1870-1914 (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2018)

[11] Wilfred Blunt, Satan Absolved: A Victorian Mystery (London: John Lane, 1899), pp. VII-VIII

Further Reading:

Wilfred Scawen Blunt, Satan Absolved: A Victorian Mystery (London: John Lane, 1899).

J. Keri Cronin, Art for Animals: Visual Culture of Animal Advocacy 1870-1914 (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2018).

Robin Doughtry, Feather Fashions and Bird Preservation: A Study in Nature Protection (California: University of California Press, 1975).

David Evans, A History of Nature Conservation in Britain (Routledge, 1992).

Michelle Facos, Symbolist Art in Context (University of California Press, 2009).

Philippe Jullian, The Symbolists (London: Phaidon, 1973).

Lillie Langtry, Days I Knew: An Autobiography (London; Hutchinson & Co, 1925).

Text by Dr Nicole Cochrane