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Provenance: Owned by Ronald Chapman, son of Watts's adopted daughter Lilian Mackintosh (Mrs Michael Chapman), and Watts's biographer (The Laurel and the Thorn, 1945).

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Notes: i) Forty-three autograph letters signed by Watts ("G.F. Watts", Signor", etc.), to Mary, his wife ("My dear Miss Tytler", "My dear Mary", "My loving Mary", "My dearest Wife", "Beloved", "Darling", etc.), a highly affectionate series, beginning with his early response to her 'fan mail' ("...you say that which is most flattering & delightful to me, being that my pictures awaken higher thoughts & feelings...") and ending a year before his death, the majority written in the months leading up to their marriage, over 100 pages, 8vo and 16mo, envelopes, 17 March 1882 to 16 May 1903

...my whole object now in painting at all is to help...but I should be unwilling to risk injury to some of these pictures which I regard as no longer mine having given them to the nation...

...I found how much I came to respect your great qualities & find how very dear you could become to me...

...I want you to know that I have come to feel for you the most profound & tender respect, & the most absolute trust in the qualities of your nature...

...I want you to feel that I desire to bring you into the closest connection with all that is beautiful & joyful & beautiful...

...you are touched by my dream, which was a dream: an impression who knows now made reality! was it think you your soul seeking its fellow?...

Watts (1817-1904) married as his second wife the thirty-seven year-old Mary Seton Fraser-Tytler (1849-1938) on 20 November 1886. She remained devoted to him.

ii) Seven autograph letters signed by Mary Fraser-Tytler ("Mary"), to Watts, expressing vividly her feelings in the period before their marriage, including an account of her dream about him ("...There are sort of harmonies going on in my life now, that I thought did not belong to this world at all..."), two of the letters subscribed with responses by Watts, 32 pages, 8vo, [1885-1886]

iii) Eight autograph letters signed by G.F. Watts ("G.F. Watts", "Signor"), to various correspondents, including Lord Leighton (explaining at length his dissatifaction with a painting, which, however, he thinks within his power to "modify", 6 April 1882); Lady Holland; Mrs Coronio (2: "...I cannot hope to succeed at all in my great project unless I try to make my life of a piece with my aspiration, but honour does not demand that I should continue to be a donkey!..."); and his adopted daughter, Lily Mackintosh (4, one referring to "The Triumph of Love"), 19 pages, chiefly 8vo, envelopes, 6 October 1875 to 10 November 1898

iv) Seven autograph letters signed, written to G.F. Watts by various correspondents, including W.B. Richmond (2, expressing doubts about his own work and gratitude for the encouragement of Watts, who, he says, was with Leighton his "gods, after M. Angelo & Raphael"); Lillie Langtry (2, about her success in New York and coming for a sitting: "...God bless you dear Mr. Watts for yr friendship & goodness to me..."); and a 'fan', Margaret Miller, explaining at length the meaning that his "Hope" has for her, 19 pages, 8vo, envelopes, 1892-1897 (where dated), some splitting at folds

v) Nineteen autograph letters signed, written to Mary, Mrs Watts, by various correspondents, including Alfred Gilbert (6, about his bust of Watts); George Meredith (condolences on the death of her husband, to whom he pays tribute); Hubert Herkomer (condolences); Sir Edward Poynter (condolences: "...The world has lost a great man & a great artist, & a great example...he has used to his utmost the magnificent gift which God bestowed on him..."); Alfred Austin (with enclosed autograph poem, "Love and Death", sent as a new year's gift, 1904); Robert Baden Powell (about a statuette and his modest attempts at modelling himself); Edward Linley Sambourne; Lord Grey, and others, 54 pages, chiefly 8vo, envelopes, 1888-1909

vi) Five autograph letters signed by Mrs Watts ("Donna") in later years, four to her adopted daughter Lily Mackintosh (Mrs Michael Chapman), and one to Michael Chapman by Lord Grey, 23 pages, 8vo, envelopes, 1906-1929 (where dated)

together with:

mary watts's album, containing pasted-in photographs or reproductions of Queen Victoria, Tennyson, members of the Tytler family, King Ludwig of Bavaria, and other subjects, with watercolour figures and decorations throughout, 51 pages, folio, red morocco covers, light wear

The marriage certificate of G.F. and Mary Watts (1886); pages from Tennyson's Poems (1857) inscribed to G.F. Watts by Julia Margaret Cameron (Christmas, 1857); the printed funeral service for Robert Browning (1889); three illustrated partly printed invitations to Watts by H. Herkomer; six pages of pen-and-ink sketches by or attributed to Edward Burne-Jones, Georgina Burne-Jones and D.G. Rossetti; and a pen and wash portrait of Watts attributed to S. Cousins (1854)

a major collection relating to g.f. watts's private life and work