Sanguine and Grey Chalk Bust-length Study of a Youth with Curly Red Hair (related to 'Earth' for the Carlton House Terrace frescoes and related to 'Bacchus and Ariadne' by Titian)

drawing height: 51 cm
drawing width: 35 cm
mount height: 59.5 cm
mount width: 43.5 cm

Watts reportedly bribed the teenage Arthur Prinsep to not cut his frizzy red hair before Watts had a chance to draw him. Arthur’s cloud of ginger hair is here drawn in soft tufts of blended chalks with crisply lines, emphasizing its volume and natural texture. The main medium, sanguine, is difficult to erase and requires an artist to be confident in their mark making. Watts regularly used sanguine, named for its blood red colour, in his drawings. Here, Watts also used grey and black chalks to add depth to the shading. This drawing was a study for Watts’s fresco Earth, painted for Arthur’s maternal aunt, Virginia, Countess Somers. The pose was inspired by the figure of Bacchus in Titian’s painting Bacchus and Ariadne (1520-23), which had been acquired for the nation in 1826.

Watts found numerous models amongst the expansive Pattle clan and their families. Arthur (COMWG2007.698, 1862) Prinsep (COMWG2007.744, 1855), the son of Watts’s hostess Sara (COMWG.137, 1850-1851) Prinsep (COMWG2014.11, 1849) (nee Pattle), was one of these, and his recognisable shock of frizzy red hair appears in numerous early Watts works. Arthur was born in 1840 and by the time Watts settled into the Pattle circle around Little Holland House was in his teens. Watts is said to have bribed the young Arthur not to cut his hair before Watts had the chance to draw him [1]. This drawing, in sanguine and black and grey chalk, as a nearly identical counterpart in red chalks with touches of black at the National Gallery of Scotland [2]. It is a study for the fresco Earth at 7 Carlton House Terrace, the London home of Arthur’s aunt Virginia, Countess Somers, now displayed at Malvern College, Worcestershire [3]. Arthur was also the model for Apollo in the central fresco of Diana and Apollo, along with Virginia as Diana.  The drawing for Apollo is in a private collection but the Watts Gallery—Artists’ Village holds a photograph by Frederic Hollyer of the drawing.  The Watts Gallery—Artists’ Village holds several studies for the complete cycle (COMWGNC.1, 1854) of the frescoes (COMWG2006.56, 1854-1855, known collectively (COMWG2006.27, 1854-1855) as The Elements (COMWG2006.35, 1854-1855), while the Royal Academy, London, holds a clear study for the Earth fresco. [4].

The Elements frescoes, as a group, reflect multiple art historical touchstones Watts encountered in Italy and in London. Earth incorporates visual elements from Botticelli’s elongated female nudes from the Uffizi (held at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze until 1919) and sculptural models from Italian museums like the monumental Nile of the Vatican (in Watts’s painting shown as a woman, but the pile of babies is quite distinct). The figure of Earth for which Arthur Prinsep was the model seems to be derived from Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne, painted in 1520-3, which had been acquired for the nation in 1826 [5]. The overall pose is somewhat altered, as in Bacchus and Ariadne, the figure of Bacchus rises up from his chariot to approach Ariadne, while Watts’s seated male figure in Earth remains perched on his rock, but the twist of the neck and angle of the shoulders is otherwise nearly identical. The Royal Academy drawing also suggests that the dancing nude female figure in the finished Earth fresco may relate to the woman at Bacchus’ right in the Titian, albeit nude, reversed, and not holding cymbals.

Watts seemed to have looked on Arthur as something of a nephew or younger brother, taking him under his wing in Paris over the winter of 1855-6, and sharing in the Prinsep family’s distress during the Indian Mutiny in 1857, where both Arthur and his elder brother Henry were enlisted. Arthur, a lieutenant in the Lahore Light Horse, was wounded in 1857 [6]. Watts repeatedly painted Arthur as a young knight, seeing the young soldier as the ideal figure for five versions of Sir Galahad, including one at Watts Gallery, and the symbolic figure of Aspiration of 1866, now in the Birmingham Museums and Galleries [7].  

Footnotes:

[1] Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: the Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1912), p. 158.

[2] National Gallery of Art, Scotland, inv. D 5023.46.

[3] On these frescoes see especially Nicholas Tromans, ‘“The Elements”: A Fresco Cycle by George Frederic Watts,’ in Tributes to Jean Michel Massing, ed. Mark Stocker and Phillip Lindley (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016).

[4] RA 04/575

[5] National Gallery, London, NG35.

[6] Arthur’s name is included in a report of new soldiers, promotions, and resignations in Allen’s Indian Mail and Register, January 2, 1857, p. 26. Veronica Franklin Gould suggests Arthur was shot and spent days evading capture by local militants. Veronica Franklin Gould, G. F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian (London: Paul Mellon Centre, 1995) p. 48; Mary Seton Watts, George Frederic Watts: the Annals of an Artist’s Life, vol. 1 (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd, 1912), p. 169.

[7] Birmingham Museums and Galleries inv.1973P85.

Further Reading:

Nicholas Tromans, ‘“The Elements”: A Fresco Cycle by George Frederic Watts,’ in Tributes to Jean Michel Massing, ed. Mark Stocker and Phillip Lindley (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2016).

Chloe Ward, The Drawings of G.F. Watts (London: Watts Gallery and Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016).

Text by Dr Melissa Gustin