George Frederic Watts was born at 52 Queen Street, Bryanston Square, Marylebone, Middlesex [now London] on 23 February 1817. His talent as an artist became evident at an early age and in 1827 he was admitted as a pupil of the sculptor William Behnes (1795-1884) at his studio on Dean Street, in Soho, London. In 1835 he was admitted a student of the Royal Academy Schools in London which he entered on 30 April 1835. He appears to have attended the schools only intermittently and left after two years, by which time he had established a studio at 33 Upper Norton Street, London

Watts came to prominence with his drawing Caractacus Led in Triumph through the Streets of Rome, which was entered for a competition to design murals for the new Houses of Parliament at Westminster in 1843, for which he was awarded £300, enabling him to travel to Italy in order to study the techniques of fresco painting.  He subsequently spent most of the next four years in Italy, returning to London in April 1847. Following his return, he settled in Mayfair, and had a studio at 30 Charles Street in nearby Berkeley Square.

During the late 1840s he painted a series of canvases that powerfully highlighted some of the social issues of the day, notably “The Irish Famine,” and “Found Drowned”, which depicted the dead body of a woman washed up beneath the arch of Waterloo Bridge. The assumption is that she had thrown herself into the river in despair to escape the “shame of being a fallen woman".

In November 1852 Watts was awarded a commission to paint a mural in the Palace of Westminster.  He chose to paint a scene from Spenser's Fairie Queene.  The success of the mural led him to paint other public murals over the next decade, notably “Justice: a Hemicycle of Lawgivers” (completed in 1859) for the Great Hall of Lincoln's Inn, London.

On 20 February 1864 Watts married the young actress Ellen Alice Terry (1847–1928). The marriage was short-lived. They separated the following year and were granted a divorce in 1877.

In the late 1850s and 1860s painted portraits of a number of celebrities including the politician William Ewart Gladstone (1859), the poets Robert Browning (1866) and Algernon Swinburne (1867), and Dean Henry Milman (c.1863).

In the mid-1860s Watts turned more to sculpture and worked on several commissions for memorials and monuments, including a monument to the Bishop of Litchfield (1869) for Litchfield Cathedral, and “Physical Energy”, a colossal bronze equestrian statue of Hugh Lupus, 1st Earl of Chester, which was commissioned in 1870 and completed in 1884.

By the 1880s, Watts had become very much an establishment figure, feted by eminent figures of the day. He was granted honorary degrees by Oxford University in 1882 and Cambridge University in 1883, and in 1885 was offered a baronetcy by Prime Minister Gladstone, which he refused.  In 1886 he painted one of his best-known and much-reproduced canvases, “Hope”, a poignant picture depicting a blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre.

On 20 November 1886 he married Mary Seton Fraser-Tytler (1849–1938).  In 1890 Watts purchased land in Compton, near Guildford, Surrey and commissioned the architect Ernest George (1839-1922) to build him Limneslease, a house in the Arts and Crafts style which was built the following year. The couple subsequently moved into the house, whilst maintaining 6 Melbury Road, London, a house which the architect Frederick Pepys Cockerell (1833-1878) had built for Watts in 1874.  In 1896 work was begun on the building the Watts Mortuary Chapel in Compton.  The building was designed by Fraser-Tytler and decorated by her together with local villagers.  In 1902 Watts purchased a further 3 acres nearby where was built the Watts Gallery.

During his long career as an artist, Watts was a frequent exhibitor. He first exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1837 and continued to do so regular until the year of his death in 1904.  His work was also shown at the Grosvenor Gallery, Grafton Gallery, Dudley Gallery, New Gallery, Fine Art Society, Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Royal Society of British Artists, Royal Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, and Royal Institute of Oil Painters in London; Royal Birmingham Society of Artists; Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; Manchester City Art Gallery; Royal Cambrian Academy in Conwy, Wales; Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh; and at the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin. He also showed eight works at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889.  

He was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1867; a Royal Academician (RA) later that year; a member of the Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) in 1888; a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters (RP) in 1892; and an honorary member of the Royal Society of Oil Painters (HROI) in 1898.

Watts died at his London home, 6 Melbury Road, on 1 July 1904.

_{Text source: Art History Research net (AHR net)}