Clytie1.0032

George Frederick Watts, 1817-1904, "Clytie", marble bust, c. 1868, Guildhall Art Gallery, London. — Bronze copies are owned by Watts Gallery, Compton Surrey, the Tate Gallery, London, the Leighton House, London, and, elsewhere.

Watts is known more for his painting than for his sculpture, yet a handful of masterworks were executed. Of this Watts himself wrote in 1868 that "my aim in this my first essay [in sculpture] has been to get flexibility, impression of colour, & largeness of character, rather than purity — gravity qualities I own to be essentially necessary to sculpture but which being made as it seems to me exclusively the objects of the modern sculptor have deadened his senses & some others making part often of the glories of ancient Art, & resulted in bare & cold work." (quoted by V.F. Gould in The Vision of G.F. Watts, p. 42.)

Of this sculpture, Gould writes "With a dramatic turn of her head, the impassioned wood nymph twists back to face the sun god and stars to metamorphose into 'a flower like a violet'. Her thrusting breasts, muscles and nerves appear to be writhing in massive Michelangelesque contrapposto. Clytie has non of the repose, even, of Greek sculpture [which Watts was hoping to surpass]."