George Frederic Watts | Hope | 1886

Watts uses a warm, earthy palette that, for most of his paintings, blossoms from a brown to a deep red. He had a very respectful presentation, engaging viewers not from the initiation, as you would see with works comprised of sharp angles and highly saturated colors, but from a point of maturity that allows the full impact of the allegorical subjects he was presenting. It was this universalism that the symbolists hoped to embody, and that we can see encompass all of Watts' soul and spirit. In exchange, his paintings ask the same in return from the viewer. And why would we not? Intellectually, the subjects are presented with enough of a veil that we feel in no way patronized. Emotionally, we feel that the colors used are anything but vapid and fickle. And of course, the topics presented are the allegories seated not in wit and concepts, nor in yearning and drive, but instead are topics seated in the soul. The most popular painting by George Frederick Watts is Hope. The painting depicts a girl sitting on a sphere. She wears a thin green dress or robe and is slumped over to place her ear next to the wires that she holds with one hand and plucks with the other. There is only a single string left on the instrument, and she is blindfolded. There should be almost nothing about this painting that differs from the feeling of vulnerability. A tiny single star is seen in the background, perhaps adding a touch of cold desolation. These feelings are all redeemed, though. The vibration of the plucked string elevates the globe that she sits on, and the viewer is not left with an impression of vulnerability, but of an innocent certainty. The distant star has an answer.