George Eliot and Watts’s Clytie

Abstract

When Burne-Jones and Rossetti came to lunch at the Priory on 9 January 1870, they surprised George Eliot by carrying into the drawing room a bust of Clytie, the gift of its sculptor, George Frederic Watts. Though she had often admired his paintings and may even have seen the original marble Clytie exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1868, she had never met Watts. Suffering all his life from vague ill health, he did not go about like his friends Millais and Leighton, whom the Leweses sometimes saw at dinner parties. Yet his enthusiasm for George Eliot’s work is clear from a letter he wrote to Charles Rickards in 1866:

In the belief that art of noble aim is necessary to a great nation, I am sometimes tempted in my impatience to try if I cannot get subscriptions to carry out a project I have long had, to erect a statue to unknown worth — in the words of the author of Felix Holt, ‘a monument to the faithful who are not famous’. I think this would be a worthy thing to do, and if I had not unfortunately neglected opportunities of making money, I would certainly do it at my own expense. I am at this time making a monumental statue, and feel confident I could execute a colossal bronze statue that should be a real monument. I would give up all other work to be enabled to carry out such an idea, and should be contented if guaranteed against loss; contented to be able to meet the expenses of the undertaking.¹