G.F. Watts

I recently read the book G.F. Watts, which Chesterton wrote in 1904. I enjoyed it greatly (perhaps not so surprising given my love of Chesterton). But it reminded me of a couple of interesting facts I had learned before.

First, as Joseph Pearce pointed out in his biography Wisdom and Innocence:

" G.F. Watts died in the year Chesterton's biography was published, but not before he had read the book. On 5 April 1904 Frances recorded in her diary that Mrs. G.F. Watts had written Gilbert 'a charming note' saying that her husband 'is really pleased with the little book' "

So it looks like Watts himself liked GKC's book. :-)

Second, while I had known little about Watts except for GKC's book, shortly after Obama's election, I came across this article which described the influence of a painting by Watts ("Hope") on Obama. While admittedly I'm not exactly a big Obama fan, still, I thought it would be interesting to note that influence in this post.

Anyway, just to give an example of a quote from that book:

Purity is the only atmosphere for passion.