George Frederic Watts OM RA (British, 1817 – 1904), Study for Clytie

George Frederic Watts OM RA (British, 1817 – 1904).

Study for Clytie.

Black chalk on paper.

4.1/2 x 7 in. (11.5 x 18 cm.) (to site edge).

Provenance: Chapman Collection.; With Julian Hartnoll, London.; Private Collection, UK.

Literature: Veronica Franklin Gould, 'G. F. Watts. The Last Great Victorian’, New Haven & London, 2004, p.89.

Note: Much of the pose of Clytie is taken from studies of Watts’s model 'Long Mary' who sat for nude studies that informed so many of his later subject paintings. However, the twist and turns here are from three-year-old Margaret Burne-Jones, twisting and turning in her mother’s arms. Muscle tension would be strengthened from studies of the Italian model Angelo Colarossi.

The artist’s marble bust of the wood nymph Clytie twisting back to face her lover, the sun god Apollo is on the point of metamorphosis into ‘a flower like a violet’. The sculpture caused a stir at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1868. Several versions of the bust were cast in bronze. Watts also painted the subject.

This object is eligible for a Certificate of BADA Provenance