Friday 17 June 2011

Dame Alice Ellen Terry and George F Watts RA

I did say that Augustus John was, probably, the greatest English portraitist of the 20th Century but George Frederick Watts RA (1817-1904), just surviving into the 20th Century must, according to this portrait of the actress Dame Alice Ellen Terry, have run him close. She is smelling the glorious, red (but scentless), camellia but (almost as a metaphor for our modern age), tenderly holding in her hand a bunch of scented violets:


It is in the National Portrait Gallery and well worth a visit in its own right.

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