First Previous 1 OF 4 NextLast

Sir Andrew Clark, 1st Bt

1 of 4 portraits of Sir Andrew Clark, 1st Bt

Sir Andrew Clark, 1st Bt, by George Frederic Watts, 1893 -NPG 1003 - © National Portrait Gallery, London

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Later Victorian Portraits Catalogue Search

Sir Andrew Clark, 1st Bt

by George Frederic Watts
Oil on canvas, 1893
25 1/2 in. x 20 1/4 in. (648 mm x 514 mm)
NPG 1003

Inscriptionback to top

Signed and dated in red paint, lower left-hand corner: ‘G.F.W. / 1893’.
On reverse, top stretcher bar, two paper labels:
(a) torn label stamped: ‘1003…’;
(b) label printed and inscr.: ‘W.F. & S. No. 1014 / C & R. / 18/11/74’;
on bottom stretcher bar fragment of inscribed label: ‘SIR ANDR…’.

This portraitback to top

In 1892, when George Frederic Watts asked Sir Andrew Clark to sit for his ‘national series’, he was a fashionable physician with the largest consulting practice in London. [1] Long and skilful attendance on W.E. Gladstone had earned him a baronetcy – ‘not the least of his achievements was to preserve the Grand Old Man into a ripe and vigorous old age’. [2] Thus in spring 1891, when Watts was at Limnerslease, his house in Surrey, ill with influenza, Clark was called in. [3] Mary Watts recorded the visit:

After the usual terrible silence while the consulting physician makes his examination, Sir Andrew said heartily, ‘You are mending, Mr. Watts; you will have to do a great deal more work yet.’ ‘I want to,’ Signor answered simply, ‘and better’ – with an earnestness that made Sir Andrew echo the words, ‘And better; that’s the true spirit of him! quite undiminished.’ And his cheerful visit helped towards improvement, though downstairs he allowed that Signor was far from being out of danger. [4]

Clark agreed to sit to Watts at the end of June 1892, [5] although it was another year before Watts began painting in earnest. Clark was selected to represent the (entire) medical profession in Watts’s ‘Hall of Fame’ series; ‘Mr. Watts informed his physician that he had but one more portrait to paint in order to complete his gallery of public men which he intended to present to the nation, and that was Sir Andrew Clark.’[6] Mary Watts recalled there were altogether five sittings:

This portrait was completed at Little Holland House in Melbury Road 1893, very shortly before Sir Andrew’s death. When he gave the 5th and last sitting on August 1st, four sittings had taken place in July 1892, Mr. Watts requiring his usual measure for a portrait, five sittings of some two hours length. [7]

Elsewhere she noted that the last one took place in October 1893, just days before Clark was struck down by a brain haemorrhage. [8]

Clark seems to have enjoyed his visits to the studio – he was an opinionated conversationalist and Mary Watts noted some memorable exchanges. [9] And he liked the portrait: ‘Sir Andrew himself was delighted with it, saying in his hearty way to Mrs. Watts: “Why, it thinks!”’ Watts was also pleased, calling it ‘one of his best’. [10]

In February 1894 Gladstone visited the studio to view the portrait of his late lamented physician, and in a note of thanks wrote to the artist: ‘I find the picture delightful to see both as a most refined & beautiful work of art and as a living recollection of the person represented.’ [11] Clark’s portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition later that spring and was well reviewed by the Athenaeum: ‘[Mr Watts’s] portrait of Sir A. Clark (251) is very fine indeed, full of thought; the reserved power of expression makes it a rare example of that art which knows where to stop.’ [12] Watts’s old friend Marion Harry Spielmann, editor of the Magazine of Art, was faintly critical of the likeness:

Two portraits, both noble heads, come from Mr G.F. Watts. The first is that of Mr. Passmore Edwards [NPG 3958] … the second, that of the late Sir Andrew Clark. Both are fine works – the latter, I think, the more pleasing of the two in colour; the former, in likeness. They prove that Mr. Watts’s skill has not abated; and it is a satisfaction to know that, through the generosity of the painter, they are to become the property of the nation. [13]

A fine wood-engraving reproduction of the Clark portrait was commissioned for the magazine, and in many ways this is more legible than the oils, which is very dark. [14]

In December 1895 Watts offered the National Portrait Gallery ‘any portraits from his collection which the Trustees might think suitable’; the director, Lionel Cust, was invited to make a selection and 17 portraits ‘were at once handed over by Mr. Watts to the Trustees as a gift to the nation’, among them the portrait of Clark. Due to the ‘patriotic nature’ of the gift and the importance of the sitters the Trustees ‘agreed to waive their usual rule as to the lapse of ten years after death’. [15] In May 1896, in a quite separate development, Watts was appointed to fill one of two vacancies arising among the Trustees. [16]

The classic Watts pattern frame was repaired and partly regilded (with bronze paint) by Francis Draper in March 1896. [17]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Matthew 2004a.
2) Brown, G.H., ‘Andrew (Sir) Clark’, Lives of the Fellows.
3) ‘From the first [Clark’s] connexion lay among the votaries of literature, science and art. He did not at the beginning appeal so much to the wealthier classes, who probably could not understand his exactitude’ (Lancet, 11 Nov. 1893, p.1224 (obits)).
4) Watts 1912, vol.2, p.193.
5) Letter from G.F. Watts to Sir A. Clark, 23 June 1892, requesting a sitting; Clark’s assent on back of letter, NPG Watts Archive, GFW/1/15/48.
6) Lancet, 11 Nov. 1893, p.1225 (obits).
7) M.S. Watts, ‘Catalogue of the works of G.F. Watts’, compiled c.1904–38, 2 vols, Watts G. Archive, Compton, vol.ii, p.37; typescript copy NPG.
8) Watts 1912, vol.2, p.238. A final sitting on 13 Oct. 1893 is also cited in Gould 2004, p.284.
9) Watts 1912, vol.2, p.204; see also Lehmann 1894, p.284.
10) Pitcairn 1894, p.76.
11) Letter from W.E. Gladstone to G.F. Watts, 21 Feb. 1894, NPG Watts Archive, GFW/1/130.
12) Athenaeum, 19 May 1894, p.652.
13) Spielmann 1894b, pp.291–2.
14) Magazine of Art, 1894, p.269.
15) NPG Report of the Trustees 1896, pp.4–6.
16) NPG Report of the Trustees 1896, p.4.
17) See NPG RP 1003.

Physical descriptionback to top

Half-length, seated, head turned three-quarters to right, gaze lowered, whiskery and bearded; wearing green-grey coat and reddish cravat.

Conservationback to top

Conserved, 1929; 1975; 1988.

Provenanceback to top

Presented by the artist, 1895.

Exhibitionsback to top

Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, 1894 (251)

G.F. Watts: The Hall of Fame, NPG, London, and Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1975.

Reproductionsback to top

[Cassell] 1894, p.34.

Watts 1975, p.20, fig.25.

View all known portraits for Sir Andrew Clark, 1st Bt

View all known portraits for George Frederic Watts