Background
- Listing: Grade 2*
- Date of building: 1903
- www.wattsgallery.org.uk
- Watts Gallery Gallery
- Watts Gallery Virtual Tour
The Watts Gallery was built in 1903 and was intended to serve as both a gallery for Watts’s work and as accommodation for apprentice potters working with his wife Mary. The architect was Christopher Hatton Turnor, an admirer of Lutyens and Voysey and reportedly a friend of Thomas Edison founder of the Edison Portland Cement Company.
At that time Surrey was easily accessed by the better-off artists of the early 20th century and as Watts was friendly with many distinguished figures of the time - including Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Lewis Carroll – Compton would doubtless have been something of a Bohemian retreat.
When success finally came to Watts he gave large amounts of money to charity. After his death in 1904, Mary honoured her husband by adding the main gallery and sculpture gallery. Then in 1922 Guildford architect Lawrence Powell - also a former chairman of the trustees of Watts Gallery - excavated the courtyard to build the sunken gallery.
Ironically, though a prolific and successful artist in his time, the fact that most of Watts’ greatest works were housed at Compton rather than in the collections of the Capital’s more easily accessible galleries, ensured that his reputation never matched those of the artists he inspired.
The Watts gallery remains one of the few purpose built one-man galleries in Britain and is a perfect example of the aesthetically pleasing but pragmatic design style of the Arts and Crafts movement.
The gallery, an important reminder of an underrated artist and humanitarian, is in need of general remedial maintenance. Restoration plans include repairs to the roof, installation of insulation, a new heating system to replace the malfunctioning hundred-year-old original system still in place, and improved visitor facilities.
