Found Drowned

Last updated

Found Drowned
George Frederick Watts Found Drowned.jpg
Artist George Frederic Watts
Year1848 (1848)–1850 (1850)
Type Oil
Dimensions119.4 cm× 213.4 cm(47.0 in× 84.0 in)
Location Watts Gallery, Compton

Found Drowned is an oil painting by George Frederic Watts, c. 1850, inspired by Thomas Hood's 1844 poem The Bridge of Sighs . [1]

The painting depicts the dead body of a woman washed up beneath the arch of Waterloo Bridge, with her lower body still immersed in the water of the River Thames. [2] She is presumed to have drowned after having thrown herself into the river in despair to escape the shame of being a "fallen woman". The grey industrial cityscape of the south bank of the Thames is barely visible in the background through thick smog. Dressed simply, perhaps a servant, her arms and body form the shape of a cross, much reminiscent of the crucifixion of Christ. She holds a locket and chain in one hand, indicating her attachment to her lover; a single star is visible as a sign of hope in the sky above. [1]

It is one of four large social realist paintings made by Watts in 184850, [2] created soon after he had returned to England from an extended period in Italy, all on melancholy themes. The others are Under the Dry Arch , The Irish Famine , and Song of the Shirt (after Hood's poem "The Song of the Shirt"; this painting is also known as The Seamstress).

Several other artists were inspired by Hood's poem The Bridge of Sighs. Examples of similar works include Rossetti's Found and Abraham Solomon's Drowned! Drowned! . The scene is echoed in the third painting of Augustus Egg's 1858 series, Past and Present .

Watts quickly abandoned his dalliance with social realism, and returned to allegorical themes. He never sold his four social realist paintings, which were first exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 188182 and are now all held by the Watts Gallery in Compton, near Guildford in Surrey.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual art of the United States</span>

Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization, there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial architecture and the accompanying styles in other media were quickly in place. Early colonial art on the East Coast initially relied on artists from Europe, with John White the earliest example. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, artists primarily painted portraits, and some landscapes in a style based mainly on English painting. Furniture-makers imitating English styles and similar craftsmen were also established in the major cities, but in the English colonies, locally made pottery remained resolutely utilitarian until the 19th century, with fancy products imported.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hood</span> English poet and humorist (1799–1845)

Thomas Hood was an English poet, author and humorist, best known for poems such as "The Bridge of Sighs" and "The Song of the Shirt". Hood wrote regularly for The London Magazine, Athenaeum, and Punch. He later published a magazine largely consisting of his own works. Hood, never robust, had lapsed into invalidism by the age of 41 and died at the age of 45. William Michael Rossetti in 1903 called him "the finest English poet" between the generations of Shelley and Tennyson. Hood was the father of the playwright and humorist Tom Hood (1835–1874) and the children's writer Frances Freeling Broderip (1830–1878).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waterloo Bridge</span> Bridge in London, England

Waterloo Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge and Golden Jubilee Bridges. Its name commemorates the victory of the British, Dutch and Prussians at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Thanks to its location at a strategic bend in the river, the bridge offers good views of Westminster, the South Bank and the London Eye to the west, and of the City of London and Canary Wharf to the east.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hudson River School</span> American art movement

The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. Early on, the paintings typically depicted the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area, including the Catskill, Adirondack, and White Mountains.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Frederic Watts</span> English painter (1817–1904)

George Frederic Watts was a British painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the "House of Life", in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evelyn De Morgan</span> English painter (1855–1919)

Evelyn De Morgan was an English painter associated early in her career with the later phase of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, and working in a range of styles including Aestheticism and Symbolism. Her paintings are figural, foregrounding the female body through the use of spiritual, mythological, and allegorical themes. They rely on a range of metaphors to express what several scholars have identified as spiritualist and feminist content. Her later works also dealt with the themes of war from a pacifist perspective, engaging with conflicts such as the Second Boer War and World War I.

<i>The Old Guitarist</i> Painting by Pablo Picasso

The Old Guitarist is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso, which he created in late 1903 and early 1904. It depicts an elderly musician, a haggard man with threadbare clothing, who is hunched over his guitar while playing in the streets of Barcelona, Spain. It is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago as part of the Helen Birch Bartlett Memorial Collection.

The Bridge of Sighs is a bridge in Venice. Bridge of Sighs may also refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">London (William Blake poem)</span> Poem by William Blake

"London" is a poem by William Blake, published in Songs of Experience in 1794. It is one of the few poems in Songs of Experience that does not have a corresponding poem in Songs of Innocence. Blake lived in London so writes of it as a resident rather than a visitor. The poems reference the "Two Contrary States of the Human Soul". The "Songs of Innocence" section contains poems which reference love, childhood and nature. Critics have suggested that the poems illustrate the effects of modernity on people and nature, through the discussion of dangerous industrial conditions, child labour, prostitution and poverty.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Miller (engraver)</span> Scottish engraver and watercolorist (1796–1882)

William Miller was a Scottish Quaker line engraver and watercolourist from Edinburgh.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annie Swynnerton</span> English painter

Annie Louisa Swynnerton, ARA was a British painter best known for her portrait and symbolist works. She studied at Manchester School of Art and at the Académie Julian, before basing herself in the artistic community in Rome with her husband, the monumental sculptor Joseph Swynnerton. Swynnerton was influenced by George Frederic Watts and Sir Edward Burne-Jones. John Singer Sargent appreciated her work and helped her to become the first elected woman member at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1922. Swynnerton painted portraits of Henry James and Millicent Fawcett. Her main public collection of works are in Manchester Art Gallery, but individual works are also held in a few other English cities, as well as can also be seen in Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, and two in Melbourne, Australia. Annie was a close friend of leading suffragists of the day, notably the Pankhurst family.

<i>The Lady of Shalott</i> (painting) Painting by John William Waterhouse

The Lady of Shalott is a painting of 1888 by the English painter John William Waterhouse. It is a representation of the ending of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 1832 poem of the same name. Waterhouse painted three versions of this character, in 1888, 1894 and 1915. It is one of his most famous works, which adopted much of the style of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, though Waterhouse was painting several decades after the Brotherhood split up during his early childhood.

Fran Bull is an American sculptor, painter, and print-maker living and working in Brandon, Vermont and Barcelona, Spain.

<i>The Awakening Conscience</i> Painting by William Holman Hunt

The Awakening Conscience (1853) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the English artist William Holman Hunt, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which depicts a woman rising from her position in a man's lap and gazing transfixed out the room's window.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Bridge of Sighs (poem)</span> 1844 poem by Thomas Hood

"The Bridge of Sighs" is an 1844 poem by Thomas Hood concerning the suicide of a homeless young woman who threw herself from Waterloo Bridge in London.

<i>Hope</i> (Watts) Painting by George Frederic Watts

Hope is a Symbolist oil painting by the English painter George Frederic Watts, who completed the first two versions in 1886. Radically different from previous treatments of the subject, it shows a lone blindfolded female figure sitting on a globe, playing a lyre that has only a single string remaining. The background is almost blank, its only visible feature a single star. Watts intentionally used symbolism not traditionally associated with hope to make the painting's meaning ambiguous. While his use of colour in Hope was greatly admired, at the time of its exhibition many critics disliked the painting. Hope proved popular with the Aesthetic Movement, who considered beauty the primary purpose of art and were unconcerned by the ambiguity of its message. Reproductions in platinotype, and later cheap carbon prints, soon began to be sold.

Past and Present is the title usually given to the series of three oil paintings made by Augustus Egg in 1858, which are designed to be exhibited together as a triptych. When first exhibited at Royal Academy in 1858 the paintings were untitled, but accompanied by a fictional quotation from a diary, "August the 4th – Have just heard that B— has been dead more than a fortnight, so his poor children have now lost both parents. I hear she was seen on Friday last near the Strand, evidently without a place to lay her head. What a fall hers has been!".

<i>I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott</i> Painting by John William Waterhouse

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott is a painting by John William Waterhouse completed in 1915. It is the third painting by Waterhouse that depicts a scene from the Tennyson poem, "The Lady of Shalott". The title of the painting is a quotation from the last two lines in the fourth and final verse of the second part of Tennyson's poem:

<i>What the Water Gave Me</i> (painting) Painting by Frida Kahlo

What the Water Gave Me is an oil painting by Frida Kahlo that was completed in 1938. It is sometimes referred to as What I Saw in the Water.

<i>After the Deluge</i> (painting) Oil painting by George Frederic Watts

After the Deluge, also known as The Forty-First Day, is a Symbolist oil painting by English artist George Frederic Watts, first exhibited as The Sun in an incomplete form in 1886, and completed in 1891. It shows a scene from the story of Noah's Flood, in which after 40 days of rain Noah opens the window of his Ark to see that the rain has stopped. Watts felt that modern society was in decline owing to a lack of moral values, and he often painted works on the topic of the Flood and its cleansing of the unworthy from the world. The painting takes the form of a stylized seascape, dominated by a bright sunburst breaking through clouds. Although this was a theme Watts had depicted previously in The Genius of Greek Poetry in 1878, After the Deluge took a radically different approach. With this painting he intended to evoke God in the act of creation, but avoid depicting the Creator directly.

References

  1. 1 2 "Found Drowned by George Frederic Watts RA (1817-1904)". www.victorianweb.org. Retrieved 30 March 2024.
  2. 1 2 "Found Drowned | Watts Gallery". 15 January 2013. Archived from the original on 15 January 2013. Retrieved 30 March 2024.