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Lg Antique Art Nouveau Lithograph Print “Hope” / Famous Listed Artist: George Frederick Watts
Item Number: 1319
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Offering A Select & Interesting Array of Decorative Art
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Circa: 1920's
Condition: Excellent Original Condition
Size: Frame Measurements: Height - 23 ¾” Width - 19 ½”
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This is a large antique lithograph titled, "Hope", by famous listed artist, George Frederick Watts. This is one of Watts’s best known works of art. This picture features a blindfolded woman sitting on what is believed to be the world. She embraces a lyre of which every string is broken … but one. Above, the sky entertains a single star. With its blues and greys, the work is reminiscent of some of Picasso’s blue period works, such as his ’Tragedy’. I have included extensive information about this famous work of art and the artist. This very compelling lithograph has wonderfully appealing colors. It has hand-colored highlights. The print is in excellent original condition. It has an original, complimentary cherry wood frame that retains a wonderful old patina. Original glass. New wire hanger. Circa 1920’s.
*** I’ve included some very interesting info, below, about the famous, well-known painting titled, HOPE:
"George Frederick (1817-1904) was a Victorian English painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist Movement. Forsyth notes that for Watts, ‘Art . . . is a branch of sacred hermeneutics. Let natural beauty be what it may, artistic beauty is higher. And why? because it is spiritual. Because you have in Art the finished product of which Nature is but the initial stage’. Art is nature ‘born again’ and ‘is to Nature what salvation is to the soul’.
Though Watts shares a Victorian fascination with death, Forsyth asserts that this fascination with death is not to be condemned as morbid since ‘Like Art itself, Death is one of the great interpreters and expanders of life’. Forsyth writes that of the artists of his day, ‘Mr. Watts is our only artist who is capable of wrestling with death and therefore the only one who understands life’. For beyond death Watts has seen the power of love triumphant and has recognized in death itself ‘the arm of the Lord and the shadow of His wing’. His work therefore expresses a truly ’supernatural hope’.
In one of his best known works, ‘Hope’, Watts pictures a blind folded woman sitting on what we take to be the world. She embraces a lyre of which every string is broken … but one. Above, the sky entertains a single star. With its blues and grays, the work is reminiscent of some of Picasso’s blue period works, such as his ’Tragedy’.
But is Watts depicting despair or something else? Forsyth argues that here in this work we have the depiction not of hope itself, but certainly of one who hopes. Like her Victorian Age, she has conquered the world, and yet such conquering has brought her neither joy, peace or power. She has turned her face away from ‘heaven’s light’ ‘and now, with earth searched and heaven to explore, her gaze is not up but down, her heaven-searching power of faith is quenched’. But quenched does not mean despair, for ‘the thirst to believe is still there. Look how the darkened soul stoops and strains for the one string’s note, for the one voice to tell her a gospel that all her achievement has not yet attained, and all the round and mastered world cannot promise. The soul has in its own self and nature a note that Nature has not. But is that note of nature only in the soul? Is it a subjective dream of its own? Is there any promise in the ‘not-ourselves’? . . . Yes, there is one star, though the poor soul sees it not. The painter sees it, and we see it. A star is there and a dim dawn.’"
- This article above was cited from: Cruciality.WordPress.com
*** I’ve also included, below, a short bio about the famous listed artist: GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS:
"In his own lifetime George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), was widely considered to be the greatest painter of the Victorian age, enjoying an unparalleled reputation. His ceaseless experimentation embodied the most pressing themes and ideas of the time. A complex figure, Watts was the finest and most penetrating portraitist of his age, a sculptor, landscape painter and symbolist which earned him the title ‘England’s Michelangelo.’
His fame and renown was not limited to Britain and in 1884 he was the first living artist to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, a show so enormously successful that it led to a longer run and a gift of his great work, Love and Life to the American people. His works also found great favour in Europe winning gold medals at the Paris Universal Exhibitions in 1878 and 1889. His influence among symbolists was profound and can be seen in the works of Gustave Moreau and Fernand Knopff.
The work of G F Watts is of seminal importance in understanding the Victorian period because he was one of its most notable artistic innovators. Watts’s own refusal to become part of any painting movement coupled with the reaction of early twentieth century critics to all things Victorian left his reputation a little tarnished. Ironically, that outspoken critic of Victorian painting, Roger Fry, considered Watts an exception. Fry recognized his great importance within the British School, as shown by his visits with his students to the Watts Picture Gallery. Until the late 1930s, the Tate Gallery had a Watts room which exclusively showed the work of the artist. The legacy of his Hall of Fame portraits form a major part of the National Portrait Gallery’s nineteenth century holdings and the Tate Gallery’s huge collection are a tribute to his importance."
- This article above was cited from: WattsGallery.org.UK/ |
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