Portrait of Mary Watts

Adopted by Peter Lawrence

George Frederic Watts married Mary Fraser Tytler on 30 November 1886. The bride was thirty-six, the groom sixty-nine. During the couple’s 1886-87 honeymoon tour Watts created portraits of his new wife.

This work was originally painted together alongisde a back view of the sitter on one canvas, but they have since been cut and framed separately. Mary later wrote that “He began, because his hand was wearied by idleness, a sketch in oil colour of me. Painted straight off in four colours on a single-prime canvas.”