- Source: George Fiddes Watt
George Fiddes Watt (15 February 1873 – 22 November 1960) was a Scottish portrait painter and engraver.
Biography
Watt studied art at Gray's School of Art, Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. He was elected to the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 1924 and received an honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1955.
Watt was sculpted by Henry Snell Gamley in 1912, Watt's son Albert having been sculpted by Gamley four years previously. A bronze statue of Watt by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, made in 1942, is in Aberdeen.
Works
Watt's large output includes paintings of many famous people of his time in Britain. An exception among the many portraits is a landscape, J. P. Inverarity Mauled by a Lioness, Somaliland .
= Portraits
=Lawyers
Viscount Haldane (Lincoln's Inn)
Viscount Reading (Middle Temple)
Alexander Low, Lord Low (The Laws)
Divines
William Paterson Paterson
Scientists
Sir J. J. Thomson (Royal Society)
Politicians
H.H. Asquith
A.J. Balfour (National Portrait Gallery)
Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
Sir William Slater Brown, Lord Provost of Edinburgh
Academics
Thomas Martin Lindsay
= Mezzotint engravings
=Robert Bannatyne Finlay (Royal Courts of Justice)
Collections and exhibitions
Watt's work was exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1906 to 1930. His portrait of his mother is in the Tate Gallery's collection.
Family
His third son, Alexander Stuart Watt (1909–1967) was a journalist based in Paris. Alastair Fiddes Watt (b. 1954) is also a landscape painter.
References
Bibliography
Chamot, Mary; Farr, Dennis; Butlin, Martin. The Modern British Paintings, Drawings and Sculpture, London 1964, II.
Sutherland, D.M. (2004–2011). "Fiddes Watt, Index no 101036779". Watt, (George) Fiddes (1873–1960), portrait painter. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 6 October 2012.
External links
88 artworks by or after George Fiddes Watt at the Art UK site
Wattart.com: Family: George Fiddes Watt
Invaluable: George Fiddes Watt
Aberdeen Art Gallery: portrait of George Fiddes Watt, 1911