necessary for the sitter and painter to attain a unity of feeling and a
sympathy, by which he (the painter) was inspired. Watts' earlier
portraits, while being far from characterless, are not instances of the
application of this principle. There is in them a slight tendency to
eighteenth-century ideal portraiture, which so often took the sitter
(and the observer too) back to times and attitudes, backgrounds and
thunderstorms, that never were and never will be.

Watts, however, was slightly influenced by the Pre-Raphaelite school. He
might, had he wished, have been their portrait painter--and indeed, the
picture of the comely Mrs. Hughes, a kind, motherly creature, with a
background of distant fields, minutely painted, is quite on the lines of
Pre-Raphaelite realism.

[Illustration: PLATE VI.--LOVE TRIUMPHANT

(At the Tate Gallery)

Time and Death having travelled together through the ages,
have run their course and are at length overthrown. Love alone
arises on immortal wings, triumphantly, with outspread arms to
the eternal skies.

Given to the nation in 1900.]

Somewhat of the same character is the portrait of Mrs. Nassau Senior,
who, with one knee on a sofa, is shown tending flowers, her rippling
golden hair falling over her shoulders. A full-length portrait of Miss
Mary Kirkpatrick Brunton, dated 1842, also belongs to the old style.
Watts had a passion for human loveliness, and in his day some of the