Eminent Victorians by George Frederick Watts

This afternoon I visited the George Frederick Watts Gallery at Compton under the Hogs Back in Surrey.

Watts was a leading member of the Royal Academy and painted mythological and allegorical paintings with names like 'Hope' and 'Evolution'. He was also much in demand as a portraitist and here are six in anti-clockwise order:

Lillie Langtry - the actress, producer and mistress of many eminent Victorians including

The Prince of Wales (future Edward VII), seen here as a young and attractive prince about Town

Lady Garvagh wife of the 3rd Baron Garvagh, a member of the Irish peerage, and member of the Canning family

Lord Lyndhurst - the fascinating John Copley Tory Lord Chancellor under Canning and the Duke of Wellington, 1827 - 1830 and then twice under Peel, born in Boston son of the early American artist john Seymour Copley. Watts painted him in the year before his death in 1863; and

Florence Nightingale - unfinished and not a terribly flattering portrait of the celebrated British social reformer and statistician, and founder of modern nursing. She came to prominence as a nurse during the Crimean War, as "The Lady with the Lamp" after her habit of making rounds at night.

John Stuart Mill - the philosopher, political economist and civil servant, contributor to social and political theory and political economy. Mill's conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. and he is remembered as a strong proponent of utilitarianism.