As a man, Watts was one of those artists who are only to be found in England--an artist who, from his youth upwards, has been able to live for his art without regard to profit. Born in London in the year 1820, he left the Academy after being a pupil there for a brief period, and began to visit the Elgin Room in the British Museum. The impression made upon him by the sculptures of the Parthenon was decisive for his whole life. Not merely are numerous plastic works due to his study of them, but several of his finest paintings. When he was seventeen he exhibited his first pictures, which were painted very delicately and with scrupulous pains; and in 1843 he took part in the competition for the frescoes of the Houses of Parliament, amongst which the representation of St. George and the Dragon was from his hand. With the proceeds of the prize which he received at the competition he went to Italy, and there he came to regard the great Venetians Titian and Giorgione as his kin and his contemporaries. The pupil of Phidias became the worshipper of Tintoretto. In Italy he produced "Fata Morgana," a picture of a warrior vainly catching at the airy white veil of a nude female figure which floats past. This work already displays him as an accomplished artist, though it is wanting in the large, Classical tranquillity of his later paintings. He returned home with plans demanding more than human energy. Like the Frenchman Chenavard, he cherished the purpose of representing the history of the world in a series of frescoes, which were to adorn the walls of a building specially adapted for the purpose. "Chaos," "The Creation," "The Temptation of Man," "The Penitence," "The Death of Abel," and "The Death of Cain" were the earliest pictures which he designed for the series. It was through fresco painting alone, as he believed, that it was possible to school English art to monumental grandeur, nobleness, and simplicity. But it was not possible for him to remain long upon this path in England, where painting has but little space accorded to it upon the walls of churches, while in other public buildings decoration is not in demand. Moreover, it is doubtful whether Watts would have achieved anything great in this province of art. At any rate, a work which he executed for the dining-hall at Lincoln's Inn--an assembly of the lawgivers of all times from Moses down to Edward I--is scarcely more than a mixture of Raphael's "School of Athens" and the "Hemicycle" of Delaroche. In magnificent allegories in the form of oil-paintings he first found the expression of his individuality. Like Turner, Watts did not paint pictures for sale. Yet he has lent one or other of his pictures to almost every public exhibition. A whole room is devoted to him in the Tate Gallery. But to know his work thoroughly one had to go to his house. His studio in Little Holland House contained almost all his important creations, and was visited by the public upon