John Stuart Mill

George Frederic Watts RA (1817-1904)

1892

Oil on canvas

Watts Gallery, Compton (no. 86)

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Related material

John Stuart Mill (sitemap)

Mill's Mental Breakdown, Victorian Unconversions, and Romantic Poetry

An Introduction to his philosophy

Photograph and formatting by George P. Landow

Many thanks to the Watts Gallery for permitting the Victorian Web to include an image of this work from their collection. Readers might wish to view the Gallery's site for news about current exhibitions and its other programs.

Watts painted three portraits of Mill, one of which is in the National Portrait Gallery. The earliest dates to 1873. According to Veronica Franklin Gould, in that year Sir Charles Dilkie, “the Liberal MP for Chelsea and a disciple of the philosopher John Stuart Mill, ” had Watts paint portraits of his wife and himself. He was so pleased with the results that he commissioned him to create one of Mill. “When the reformer came to Little Holland House on 17 March 1873, he was fascinated by the painter's poetic ideas. The two men struck up a rapport. ‘Strange as it was,’ Watts told William Richmond, ‘but of all my pictures Mill invariably picked out the most abstract and dwelt upon these, not only with curiosity but with evident enjoyment.’ He was surprised that these intellectual subjects attracted more interest among Manchester businessmen than they did among aristocrats, whose education, wealth, and leisure constricted, as Watts put it, ‘the natural fosterers of the noblest aspirations in Art.’ The artist endorsed Mill's belief that social reform required a change of national character” (110-11).

Bibliography

Gould, Veronica Franklin. G. F. Watts: The Last Great Victorian. London: Yale University Press, 2004.

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Last modified 22 March 2012