大众艺术网：“我画的是想法而不是事物“ —— 英国画家、雕塑家 George Frederic Watts 绘画、雕塑、素描作品

大众艺术网已经走进第四个年头，

感谢不离不弃、弃而走之的新老朋友们，

爱也好，嫌也好，

艺术本身就是一种信仰、教育和奉献，

是人生的一种责任，

是人生的一门功课，

是人生的精神世界，

是人生的共同财富。

当物质的饥饿得不到满足时，

那艺术就什么都不是，

当你不想打开自家的门户时，

那世界就什么都不是。

当你只想活在自己的世界里，

那他人就什么都不是。

放眼世界，人类就是一个家庭，

不分你我，共同创造，共同分享。

世上有一群人造福着人类的精神世界，

让我们不寂寞、不平庸、不饥饿。

大众艺术网尽艺术的天职，

胸怀世界，为您开启世界之窗，

为艺术执着而奋斗的艺术家们点个赞！

感谢一路有您，

大众艺术网不会孤单，才有动力！

—— 大众艺术网 / 应为平（旅美油画家、瓷画家）

George Frederic Watts

关于画家

George Frederic Watts，OM，RA（伦敦1817年2月23日 - 1904年7月1日）是一位英国维多利亚时代的画家和雕塑家，与象征主义运动有着关系。他说“我画的是想法，而不是事物。” 瓦茨在他的一生中因其寓言作品而闻名，如希望与爱情和生活。这些绘画旨在形成一个名为“生命之屋”的史诗象征循环的一部分，其中生命的情感和愿望都将以一种普遍的象征性语言来表现。

George Frederic Watts, OM, RA (London 23 February 1817 – 1 July 1904) was an English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said "I paint ideas, not things." Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.

Watts was born in Marylebone, London on the birthday of George Frederic Handel (after whom he was named), to the second wife of a poor piano-maker. Delicate in health and with his mother dying while he was still young, he was home-schooled by his father in a conservative interpretation of Christianity as well as via the classics such as the Iliad. The former put him off conventional religion for life, while the latter was a continual influence on his art. He showed artistic promise very early, learning sculpture from the age of 10 with William Behnes, starting to devotedly study the Elgin Marbles (later writing "It was from them alone that I learned") and then enrolling as a student at the Royal Academy at the age of 18. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1837. He also began his portraiture career, receiving patronage from his close contemporary Alexander Constantine Ionides, who later came to be a close friend.

He came to the public eye with a drawing entitled Caractacus, which was entered for a competition to design murals for the new Houses of Parliament at Westminster in 1843. Watts won a first prize in the competition, which was intended to promote narrative paintings on patriotic subjects, appropriate to the nation's legislature. In the end Watts made little contribution to the Westminster decorations, but from it he conceived his vision of a building covered with murals representing the spiritual and social evolution of humanity.

The prize from the Westminster competition did, however, fund a long visit to Italy from 1843 onwards, where Watts stayed and became friends with the British ambassador Henry Fox, 4th Baron Holland and his wife Augusta at their homes in Casa Feroni and the Villa Careggi. Also while in Italy Watts began producing landscapes and was inspired by Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel and Giotto's Scrovegni Chapel. In 1847, while still in Italy, Watts entered a new competition for the Houses of Parliament with his image of Alfred the Great, Alfred Inciting the Saxons to Prevent the Landing of the Danes by Encountering them at Sea, on a patriotic subject but using Phidean inspiration. Leaving Florence in April 1847 for what was intended to be a brief return to London, he ended up staying. Back in Britain he was unable to obtain a building in which to carry out his plan of a grand fresco based on his Italian experiences, though he did produce a 45 ft by 40 ft fresco on the upper part of the east wall of the Great Hall of Lincoln's Inn entitled Justice, A Hemicycle of Lawgivers (completed 1859), inspired by Raphael's The School of Athens. In consequence most of his major works are conventional oil paintings, some of which were intended as studies for the House of Life.

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