lets dealing with industrial, educational and political subjects, ‘The History of English Rule and Policy in South Africa’ (1897) had a circulation of nearly 250,000 copies, including translations into French and Dutch.
Painted portraits of Spence Watson are numerous. In addition to that by Sir George Reid at the National Liberal Club, one by Miss Lilian Etherington was given to the Newcastle Liberal Club in 1890. Another by Ralph Hedley, R.B.A., was presented to him in 1898 (now at Bensham Grove). A replica by H. Macbeth Raeburn, A.R.E., of Sir George Reid's portrait, presented by subscription to the Literary and Philosophical Institution, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, was unveiled by Mr. Thomas Burt, M.P., on 24 Sept. 1912. A portrait by Percy Bigland is in the John Bright Library, Friends' school, York, and a replica by the artist at Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A bust by Christian Neuper is in the Free Library, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
The ‘Spence Watson’ prize in English literature was founded in Armstrong College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, out of funds which he bequeathed to the college. A fund to establish at the college a Spence Watson lectureship in English literature is in process of formation by members of the Literary and Philosophical Institution, Newcastle-upon-Tyne.
[Northumberland County History, vols. iii. and iv.; A Historical Sketch of the Society of Friends (‘in scorn called Quakers’) in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Gateshead, 1653–1898, by John William Steel, with contributions from other Friends, 1899; Hist. of Literary and Philosophical Institution, Newcastle-upon-Tyne; Hist. of the National Liberal Federation; Who's Who, 1911; unpublished Reminiscences by Robert Spence Watson; and three unpublished volumes of collected speeches and personal records.]
WATTS, GEORGE FREDERIC (1817–1904), painter and sculptor, was the eldest child of the second marriage of George Watts, a musical-instrument maker (born 1774), who came to London from Hereford about 1800. Some Welsh names in the family of George Watts's mother indicate that he may have been partly of Welsh descent. (This is the only ground for the statement often confidently made that the artist was a ‘Celt.’). By his first marriage George Watts had a son and two daughters, who were nearly grown up when in 1816 he took for second wife a widow whose maiden name had been Harriet Smith. Their son, George Frederic, was born in Queen Street, Bryanston Square, on 23 Feb. 1817. Three more sons followed, who all died in infancy or early childhood. George Watts, besides being a piano maker and tuner, was much occupied with unsuccessful schemes for the invention and manufacture of new musical instruments. The second Mrs. Watts fell into a consumption and died in 1826. The boy George Frederic grew up as the ailing and cherished son of a refined, ineffectual father in straitened circumstances, his two half-sisters by the first marriage managing the household as best they might. He suffered much from giddiness and sick headache, and had no regular schooling, but devoured the books, few but good, that were in the house, especially the ‘Iliad’ and Scott's novels. He learned his Bible, and despite painful recollections of the gloom and depression of puritan Sundays, loved it in after life, not indeed as revelation, but as the highest ethical and traditional poetry and symbolism. From childhood he was devoted to drawing, and there are still extant minutely accurate copies of engravings made by him with a chalk point in his twelfth year. His father, who had some taste in art, encouraged this bent. The opportunity, not for regular teaching but for study of a kind perhaps more fruitful, came to him through acquaintance with the family of Behnes. The elder Behnes was a piano-maker from Hanover with whom George Watts was in some way associated. In the same house with him lived a French émigré practising as a sculptor, and this man's example moved two of Behnes's sons, Henry and William, to follow the profession of art. William and a crippled third brother, Charles, occupied first a studio in Dean Street, Soho, and afterwards one in Osnaburgh Street. Of these studios Watts in boyhood had the run, and learned all that could be learned there. William Behnes was a fine draughtsman and something of a painter as well as a sculptor; he taught the boy early to feel and understand the supreme qualities of the Parthenon marbles. A friend of Charles, a miniature painter, gave young Watts his first chance and first lesson in oil-painting by setting him to make a copy from Lely and prescribing the colours to be used. Soon we hear of the lad taking in William Behnes with a sham Vandyck which, for a jest, he had himself painted and smoked to make it look old. George Watts showed some of his son's drawings to Sir Martin Archer Shee,
