• 1 On the importance of Venetian painting in the development of a British school of painting, (...)
• 2 See in particular Prettejohn, Modern Painters, Old Masters 210–237, where the author deals w (...)

1From Reynolds to the Pre-Raphaelites, the reception of Venetian Renaissance art played a major role in the development of a British painting tradition. The dynamics of this fruitful encounter branched out into varied and sometimes overlapping spheres, from collecting to historiography – expanding even to affect the artistic practices, as well as the training, of many British painters by shaping their relationships with colour, effect and pictorial technique.1 The rich legacy of the Venetian Renaissance tradition has often been discussed by scholars who explored the critical fortune of individual major figures, such as Titian or Tintoretto, or who focused on the historiographical or museological dimension of this revival. For example, The Reception of Titian in Britain from Reynolds to Ruskin (2013), edited by Peter Humfrey, offers multiple perspectives to address the case of Titian and his relationship with England. Elizabeth Prettejohn’s book Modern Painters, Old Masters: The Art of Imitation from the Pre-Raphaelites to the First World War (2017), also highlighted the contributions of Venetian painting to the development of a British artistic identity, whilst also offering new methodological insights that rethink the very concepts of imitation and reception as tools of originality and invention.2

• 3 On Watts’s activity as a portrait painter, see Bryant; see also Colin Trodd, ‘Illumina (...)

2During the 19^th century, ‘Venetianism’ also played an important role in the development of the portrait as a typically British genre, as Venetian models became a point of reference for many artists practising portraiture. Such Venetian influence on the British tradition of portraiture is precisely what this paper aims to explore, through the emblematic case of the self-portraits of the Victorian painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts. Particularly famous for his prolific activity as a portrait painter,3 Watts devoted himself with equal intensity to his own self-representation. Many of his self-portraits explicitly engage with the tradition of Venetian art, and they do so in diverse ways. On the one hand, Watts enjoys presenting himself in the guise of Venetian masters of the past, playing with physical similarities, as well as with the costume and the pose. On the other hand, references to Renaissance Venetian paintings also emerge from the purely pictorial and material dimensions of Watts’s self-portraits, revealing the artist’s desire to also absorb the technical and practical knowledges of the old masters. Therefore, Watts’s self-portraits offer a useful case study for understanding a relationship with the art of the past that not only acts on a subjective level, shaping the artist’s intimate and public personae, but also affects the practical realisation of the artist’s works and their pictorial rendering.

• 4 George Frederic Watts. Self-Portrait Aged 24. 1840. Oil on canvas. 13 x 11 cm. Compton, Watt (...)
• 5 Eugène Delacroix, Portrait de Frédéric Chopin. 1838. Oil on canvas. Paris, Musée du Lo (...)
• 6 George Frederic Watts, Self-Portrait in Armour. 1845. Oil on canvas. 86.4 x 66 cm, private c (...)

4The background is left in reserve, whilst the unfinished aspect of the composition, the rapid, sketchy brushstrokes, as well as the dishevelled hair, reveals the affinity with a generation of artists and poets to which the young artist socially and culturally longs to belong. A small oil-on-copper painting, the Self-Portrait Aged 24,4 still much refers to these same visual codes. The glowing contrast dramatises the hollow eyes and the unruly hair and serves to highlight the artist’s forehead, in a manner reminiscent of Delacroix’s portrait of Chopin.5 The unusual choice of support allows the contrasting shades to be accentuated, whilst the reduced format can also be associated with a personal and intimate destination. In 1845, however, Watts paints the Self-Portrait in Armour,6 choosing a radically different model of self-representation.

• 7 For more on Watts’s relationship to Italy, and a detailed account of the stages of the (...)
• 8 For more on the reception of Venetian painting in Ruskin’s critical thinking and writings, s (...)

5The romantic spontaneity of the barely sketched face gives way to a historicised, artful and elaborate staging of the self. In three-quarter view, the artist paints himself as a nobleman wearing 17^th century style armour, standing before an open window overlooking an Italian landscape, where the Villa Medicea of Careggi can be discerned. In its dusky tones and luminous atmospheres, the painting closely evokes the tonalism of Venetian painting, as well as the colourism of Van Dyck. Watts painted this self-portrait during his first long stay in Italy, between 1843 and 1847.7 The painting acts as an affirmation of a renewed source of artistic and cultural inspiration, as Watts’s artistic persona appears radically transformed by the contact with the old masters’ tradition. However, it is not until the artist’s second stay in Italy, in 1853 – when Watts discovers Padua and Venice, and the works of Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese – that Venetian painting fully captures his attention. In her memoirs of her husband’s life, Mary Seton Watts recalls the strong impact of this Venetian discovery. She even quotes a fragment of a letter sent by Watts to Ruskin, where the painter expresses the whole extent of his admiration for the Venetian old masters8:

• 9 See Watts, 1: 147: ‘for Giorgione and Titian are wonderfully Pheidian in texture of flesh an (...)

6According to Watts, who is fully convinced (as any true aesthete should be) that nature imitates art, Venetian painting serves as a filter capable of revealing the secrets of light and colour, and therefore, of nature itself. However, it is interesting to note that Watts’s appreciation of the Venetian models transcends the simplistic trope of colourism versus drawing. According to Watts, the paintings of Giorgione and Titian also have distinctive sculptural qualities, even evoking the art of Phidias in their ability to convey the sense of volume, drapery and movement, coming as close as possible to the representation of life.9

• 10 On this subject, see Jason Rosenfeld, ‘Millais and the “Luster of Titian”’, in Humfrey 175–18 (...)

9At this point, it is also important to specify which artists Watts identified as the leading figures of the Venetian school. Although the painter surely had extensive knowledge of the Venetian old masters, it is the name of Titian that stands out as the dominant reference in Watts’s writingsand notes on art.10 Watts’s friend and biographer Emilie Isabel Barrington recounts, for example, how the painter seemed to recognise glimpses of Titian’s paintings in the evening light:

• 11 On this subject, see Lavorgna and Aronson, 209–215. In 1796, Thomas Provis and his dau (...)
• 12 Boschini.

10But if Watts claims to see nature with ‘such eyes as Giorgione and Titian had’ (Watts, 1: 209), the painter also regrets that he does not possess the old masters’ brains and hands, and he is therefore very much interested in unveiling their ancient painting techniques. After all, since the early 19^th century, interest in the figure of Titian had been associated with a desire to unravel the secrets of his painting technique, whose traces and sources were desperately sought. The most striking episode in British art history is undoubtedly that of the ‘Venetian Secret’, which caused great embarrassment to the Royal Academy in 1796, when Thomas Provis approached its President, Benjamin West, claiming to possess an authentic manuscript that contained the secrets of Titian’s technique.11 This interest in the technical secrets of Titian’s method was still very much alive even in the late 19^th century. John Everett Millais, for example, describes in his letters Titian’s peculiar use of fingers, board brushes and linseed oil, applied directly onto the canvas (Rosenfeld 186). Many sources reveal that Watts also shared this peculiar interest in Titian’s method of painting; Barrington gives useful evidence of it in her Reminiscences of Watts’s life. According to Barrington, in 1879, Watts became aware of a passage devoted to Titian’s technique taken from Marco Boschini’s 1660 book La Carta del Navegar Pitoresco.12 Boschini’s treatise circulated widely in British artistic circles of the time, and Frederic Leighton certainly possessed a copy of the book. He personally lent it to Barrington, who would read passages from the book to Watts(Barrington 86–87). Boschini’s explanation of Titian’s painting method reveals significant details of the technique used to achieve the chromatic richness typical of the old master’s later works, and to maintain the vividness and intensity of colours in his paintings. Furthermore, the passage mentioned by Barrington also indicates how Titian prepared his canvas and layered the paint with firm, colour-laden strokes, working on the half-tones, to give shape to his figures with an incredible economy of gestures. Boschini also recounts that Titian would often leave his paintings turned towards the wall for months at a time, later returning to them to add touches and details that would make his figures appear alive and breathing. He would finish his paintings solely with the touch of his fingers, mixing the colours, adding dark or pink touches to animate the surface of the canvas. Barrington directly cites the passage from Boschini’s text she would read to Watts:

• 13 Barrington 86: ‘I read it to Watts in 1879, and from that time he definitely adopted Titian’ (...)

11Thanks to his reading of Marco Boschini’s text, Watts also came to discover Palma the Younger’s famous anecdote, according to which Titian painted more with his fingers than with his brush (Barrington 86). Barrington directly relates Watts’s readings on Titian’s method of painting to the artist’s own practice, largely nourished by the revival of old masters’ techniques.13 For example, Watts began to work on his canvases unceasingly for years and years, but always trying to retain the same freshness of the first sketch, just as Titian did, because both painters considered their artwork as the result of a long gestation and evolution:

• 14 Frederic Leighton. Self-Portrait. 1878. Oil on canvas. 76.5 x 64 cm. Florence, Gallerie degl (...)
• 15 Letter from G.F. Watts to Charles Rickards, 10 Feb. 1869, Watts Papers, cited in Watts (...)

13In 1880, Frederic Leighton, recently elected President of the Royal Academy, sent his self-portrait in a High Renaissance costume to the Uffizi14 for the collection of ‘Portraits of Artists, Painted by Themselves’. Leighton also urged the Uffizi’s director to request portraits from John Everett Millais and Watts, then the most outstanding living representatives of the British school of painting. Watts’s painting for the Uffizi gallery of artists’ portraits, which he considered to be the most interesting collection of paintings in the world,15 is relatively small in its format, yet it plays a decisive role in the construction of the painter’s artistic identity and public persona. It was supposed to crystallise the image of an artist at the peak of his fame and international recognition. Therefore, it is significant that the painting is built entirely on the resemblance to Titian. Indeed it is obvious that Watts chose here to take his inspiration from the famous Titian self-portrait housed in the Prado Museum (Fig. 4).

• 16 Colin Trodd points out that Watts considered Gainsborough to be a mannerist, capable of grea (...)
• 17 Watts painted many different versions of Time, Death, and Judgement over the last two (...)

15Of course, the physical resemblance is also a way to emphasise a symbolic kinship that directly involves Watts’s perception of his art and role as an artist. As Colin Trodd points out, by highlighting the filiation with artists such as Titian, Watts aims to promote a practice of painting – and especially portrait painting – that is not devoted solely to the search for technical effect, for the quick and brilliant result, such as in the work of Gainsborough16 (Trodd 135–36). For Watts, the art of portraiture must achieve communion between body and spirit – between technique and the spiritual ideal conveyed by the image. The reference to Titian’s painting then functions as a guarantee of a mystical and interior dimension that adds to the identity of the subject represented. Yet, in his self-portrait for the Uffizi, Watts also stands before what appears to be a study for Time, Death, and Judgement,17 one of his most ambitious allegorical compositions. This peculiar choice may also reveal the artist’s willingness to present himself as both a great portraitist and as a major figure in history painting, much like Titian.

• 18 The ‘Kensington Valhalla’ comprehended a series of life-size portraits of famous artists com (...)

16Thus, Watts literally models himself on the image of the old Venetian master, both aesthetically and technically. But what happens when Watts is the one who creates the portrait of Titian? In 1868–1870, Watts paints a portrait of the Venetian master that served as a model for one of the mosaics of the ‘Kensington Valhalla’, a series depicting famous artists from the past that would decorate the South Court of the South Kensington Museum18 (Fig. 5).

• 19 It is still not known whether the della Robbia tondo that we can see in the painting, (...)

18Seated in front of a tondo by Della Robbia in his Limnerslease garden, Watts still presents himself in the guise of a Venetian Renaissance painter, looking just like that image of Titian painted by himself only a few years earlier.19

• 20 Wivel 119. On Titian’s self-portraits, see also Freedman.

19At this point, it is useful to question what this reference to Titian reveals of Watts’s intimate approach to self-portraiture and self-fashioning, and, more generally, of Victorian artists’ relationship to the self-portrait as a genre. The parallels that can be drawn between the practice of self-portraiture in Titian and Watts, albeit with the obvious distinctions related to the different historical and social context, are in fact intriguing. As the art historian Matthias Wivel has demonstrated, ‘the image of Titian with his long beard and moustache, wearing a skull cap, dark clothes under a plated fur vest and a heavy gold chain around his neck, is quintessential’.20 Wivel also points out how Titian actively worked for it to be so: Titian crafted his public persona through painting and prints, to the point that after his death, his image became a visual trademark that was endlessly employed by publishers and printmakers – a trademark that, we may add, was still vividly imprinted in the visual culture of Victorian artists.

• 21 Ibidem.

20Through a careful staging of clothing, accessories and posing, Titian created a layered system of self-representation where references to Antiquity intersected with the fashion of his own time, creating the composite image of the noble artist. He posed as ‘the elder statesman of Venetian art, divinely inspired, drawing from nature and with awareness of the ideals of antiquity’21 but was also mindful of the representation of his own practice, as well as of his leading role in the tradition of disegno. Watts appears to emulate this same process of self-fashioning to create an instantly identifiable representation of himself to pass on to the public and the posterity. Watts’s red gown is undoubtedly a central element of this visual strategy; on the one hand, it reinforces the link to the fashion of the past, but on the other, it also helps to underscore Watts’s singular position in comparison to his Victorian colleagues. Where Leighton shows himself as a noble gentleman in sumptuous aristocratic garb, Watts plays with a less secular and materialistic image of the artist. The recurring use of the Oxford red gown evokes at once a clerical, academic and intellectual figure whose mediation of the past passes through a fine spiritual knowledge and wisdom. In this sense, Watts makes use of the Renaissance, much in the same way Titian had previously made use of Antiquity, to build the image of an artist simultaneously in and out of his time. And if Titian had sought to affirm his supremacy in the tradition of disegno, in a similar way, Watts models himself on Titian to establish his leading position in the tradition of colourism and tonal painting. Therefore, the very modernity of Watts’s artistic language is based on an anachronistic reference that nevertheless ends up becoming a mark of uniqueness and authenticity. It is interesting to note, however, that in Watts’s case it is almost impossible to distinguish the public and private dimensions, for the two dimensions are intertwined. In Watts’s case, the self-portrait reveals a more intimate communion with the image of the past, one that evolves and persists throughout his whole personal and artistic journey. This bond becomes a constituent element of the artist’s very personality, of his intimacy and individuality, beyond the very need to construct a public persona.

• 22 Disguising oneself in Renaissance costumes and posing as famous artists of the past wa (...)

21However, the trend of self-representation in the guise of artists from the past must also be understood in its dimension of a refined game – a cultural fashion – shared by other figures of the Victorian era. It is, however, a serious game, and important members of the contemporary cultural elite enthusiastically adhered to its rules. In this rich, rapid succession of representations and self-representations, it is worth noting that photographic portraits play an equally strategic role in the process of fixating an ideal image of the artist based on referencing the past and the great figures of the tradition. David Wilkie Wynfield’s 1864 photographic portrait series The Studio: A Collection of Photographic Portraits of Living Artists, Taken in the Style of the Old Masters, by an Amateur is an important example of this game of disguise where identification with figures from the past becomes a fully relevant identity element for contemporary artists. Wynfield’s series features the portraits of thirty-nine of the most prominent artistic figures of the time, all posing before the camera as Renaissance men.22 Part of the series was devoted to the Dutch school, another to the Venetian school, and yet another to the Flemish school. The photographs show their subjects in the portrait format typical of the iconography of great men, and all are wrapped in historical costumes. As Juliet Hacking points out when discussing the relationship between photographic portraits and artistic identity in British art:

• 23 For a comprehensive history of ‘blur’ in photography, see especially Martin 2023.

23In addition to the resemblance through costume, one can also discern a relation to Venetian painting that is revealed not only in the material rendering, but also in the visual effects of the photographs themselves, such as in the use of the close-up, the shallow depth of field, or the ‘soft focus’ technique. In fact, although many critics considered the ‘soft focus’ typical of Wynfield’s photographs to be a sign of amateurism, others pointedly praised the pictorial quality that the technique gave to the photographs. This possible relationship between pictorialism and Venetian painting, which merits further exploration by specific studies, could also be glimpsed in Steichen’s photographic portrait of Watts in 1904 (Fig. 8). Thanks to the gum bichromate technique, Watts’s profile stands out by force of a strong luminous contrast against a vaporous background, whilst the outline of the figure seems to slowly fade and dissolve in the atmosphere, in a manner not unlike the painter’s own supple and airy touch.23

• 24 Edward Steichen. Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette. 1902. Gum bichromate print. 26. (...)
• 25 Steichen, n.p. Steichen discovered Titian’s work during his pilgrimages in the Louvre. In hi (...)

24After all, the filiation with the Venetian tradition, and more specifically with the figure of Titian, is explicitly claimed by the statements of Steichen himself, who also considered the Venetian old master a major aesthetic reference. Furthermore, in Steichen’s case the self-portrait also becomes the site of a direct confrontation with Titian and an opportunity to assert a precise artistic identity – one that is expressed through photography but rooted in the pictorial tradition of the Renaissance. In his autobiography, Steichen recounts the origin of his famous Self-Portrait with Brush and Palette24 in these terms: ‘I dressed up in one of Day’s stocks, draped his mantle around my shoulders, picked up a palette and brush, and posed in the mirror for what I thought was going to be photography’s answer to [Titian’s] “Man with a Glove”’.25

• 26 Ricketts engaged in an intensive critical activity and left important evidence for reconstru (...)

26Watts and Steichen’s peculiar relationship with Venetian Renaissance tradition makes it possible to broaden the inquiry towards a larger context, where Venetianism deeply infused late Victorian art and practice (as demonstrated also by the works of William McKeown). Other Victorian artists close to Watts used the revival of a Venetian-style type of portrait and self-portrait as a privileged means of staging and claiming a definite position with respect to both tradition and modernity. I suggest returning for one moment to Titian’s Prado self-portrait, which served as a model for Watts’s own self-portrait of 1880. At the very beginning of the 20^th century, Titian’s painting also attracted the attention of the painter and art critic Charles Ricketts.26 In his 1903 book The Prado and Its Masterpieces, Ricketts commented on Titian’s self-portrait, recognising the singular affinity existing between this painting and George Frederic Watts’s later works. According to Ricketts, in Watts’s maturity, his brushstrokes had become increasingly supple and loose, in a manner very similar to that of Titian:

• 27 Titian. Wisdom. 1560. Oil on canvas. Venice. Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana.

27A few years later, in 1910, Ricketts also published a monograph on Titian, which focuses very little on the artist’s life, and much more on his works; an entire chapter is dedicated to Titian as a portrait painter. Ricketts recognises the ability of Venetian artists to fully interrogate the potentialities of oil painting, of light and atmospheric effects – and, taking Titian’s portraits as an example, he reads them as a paradigm of the full maturity of Venetian painting. Even in this book, Ricketts compares Watts and Titian, considering, for example, that Titian’s Wisdom,27 in its disintegration of touch ‘anticipates the broken workmanship of G. F. Watts’ (Ricketts, Titian, 166).

• 28 On Ricketts and Shannon collection, see Darracott and Munro. The collection, comprising more (...)
• 29 Titian. Man with a Glove. 1520. Oil on Canvas. 100 x 89 cm. Paris, Musée du Louvre.
• 30 McKeown, England’s Giorgione, p. 88.
• 31 Titian. Portrait of Pietro Aretino. 1545. Oil on Canvas. 96.7 x 76.6 cm. Florence, Palazzo P (...)

29Both Shannon and Ricketts were fervent admirers of Venetian Renaissance artists, as William McKeown has amply demonstrated (McKeown, England’s Giorgione). Together, they even collected several drawings by Tintoretto, as well as a drawing attributed to Titian.28 It is therefore no surprise to discover that Shannon’s portrait of Ricketts, commonly known as The Man in an Inverness Cape, is also deeply embedded in a Venetian atmosphere. Shannon paints Ricketts in a dark cloak, in profile, against a neutral background. The bright strokes draw attention to his gloved hands, which are reminiscent of the hands painted by Titian in Man with a Glove.29 On a small table beside him we can see a quill pen, as well as a book with a bookmark, which displays Shannon’s signature. In the letters where Ricketts re-enacts the fiction behind the painting, the artists imagine that that book may have been sent to him by the Aretin himself. As McKeown points out,30 it is therefore the image of Ricketts as a man of letters and critic that Shannon wishes to highlight in a painting that is also very probably modelled on Titian’s Portrait of Aretin.31

• 32 Vaisse, ‘L’artiste face à soi’ 31. On the ambiguous place of self-portraits in 19^th ce (...)

30Of course, this itinerary on the traces of Venice in the self-portraits of British artists cannot provide an unambiguous and universal reading of the role of the self-portrait in the artistic landscape of the time. As Pierre Vaisse reminds us in his seminal essay devoted to self-portraiture as a genre (or rather, to the very possibility of considering it as such), the forms and functions of self-portraiture are always too disparate and diverse to draw homogeneous and universal conclusions from a few selected case studies.32 It is true, however, that the link with the past reveals a common endeavour to assert a precise artistic identity rooted in the iconographic, technical and aesthetic traditions of the Renaissance. What the works examined here unquestionably have in common, over and above their differences, is a shared use of the past as a strategic instrument of self-construction, as well as self-positioning, in the artistic scene of the time.