George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), ‘Death Crowning Innocence’, 1886-87“A little ch
George Frederic Watts (1817-1904), ‘Death Crowning Innocence’, 1886-87“A little child lying in the lap of the winged figure of Death. Death, ever to Watts a silent angel of pity, "takes charge of Innocence, placing it beyond the reach of evil.”This painting, in some ways a representative Victorian work, must be seen in the context of the high infant and child mortality of the period.”Source: http://www.victorianweb.org/victorian/painting/watts/paintings/6.html“The subject of this work was instigated by the sudden death of Mary Watts’s young nephew, following a fall from a pony. Watts described his design for Death Crowning Innocence in a letter to Mary, enclosing also a sketch of it for the grieving mother: 'I am making a design which hereafter may be lovingly worked into a monument, The Angel of Death with a child in her lap on whose head she is placing a circlet, Death the Angel Crowning Innocence’. Mary replied: 'I long to see the angel and child … You are quite wrong in thinking that you are anything but a comforter, even to the most sorely stricken’. Watts’s portrayal of Death as a benign, angelic and moreover womanly figure, breaks with the traditional iconography of Death as a 'grim reaper’…Here, Death, an enthroned and winged female figure, again holds a baby in her lap, and of this Watts explained that 'even the germ of life is in the lap of Death’. At a later date, Watts spoke of Death Crowning Innocence as 'the gentle nurse that puts the children to bed’.Source: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/watts-death-crowning-innocence-n01635/text-summary -- source link
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