Self-Portrait

1850–1871

Lives with the Prinseps at Little Holland House

After meeting Henry Thoby Prinsep and his wife Sara in his studio, Watts enters the Prinseps’ bohemian circle, which includes Sara’s sisters and Julia Margaret Cameron; in 1850 he helps them take a 21-year lease on Little Holland House and lives there with them and their salon for those years. Of pupils he accepted only two — the hosts’ son Valentine Cameron Prinsep and John Roddam Spencer Stanhope; both remained friends, but neither became a major artist.

20 février 1864

Married: Ellen Terry

1864–1865

Separation from Ellen Terry

Introduced to Ellen Terry by their mutual friend Tom Taylor, Watts marries the actress, thirty years his junior, seven days before her seventeenth birthday; within a year they separate. He does not divorce her at once and makes her allowance, paid to her father, conditional on her never returning to the stage.