Death Crowning Innocence

1870s

A revised “House of Life” under Max Müller’s influence

The “House of Life” — a planned epic symbolic cycle in which the emotions and aspirations of life are expressed in one universal symbolic language — receives a revised version in the 1870s. Watts’s association with Rossetti and the Aesthetic movement changes: he combines the Classical tradition with a deliberately agitated, troubled surface, draws on the ideas of Max Müller, the founder of comparative religion, and hopes to trace the evolving mythologies of the world’s peoples, fusing spiritual ideas with modern science, above all Darwinian evolution.

1886

Second marriage to Mary Fraser Tytler

In 1886, at the age of 69, Watts marries for the second time — Mary Fraser Tytler, a Scottish designer and potter, then aged 36.

1887

Proposes a Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice

For Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee Watts proposes a memorial to heroic self-sacrifice, honouring ordinary people who died saving the lives of others and might otherwise be forgotten. The scheme is not accepted at the time.

1891

Buys land at Compton and builds Limnerslease

In 1891 Watts buys land near Compton, south of Guildford in Surrey. The couple name the house Limnerslease — from “limner” (artist) and “leasen” (to glean) — and build a museum of his work nearby.