G.F Watts in Kensington, Little Holland House and Gallery

Watts Gallery. Very Good/Very Good. 2009. First Edition. Hard Cover. Sm 4to 0956102239 Dust jacket complete, unclipped. Original cloth boards with bright gilt titling on spine. Small label on ffep. Numerous photographs & illustrations some in colour. 92 pages clean and tight. G.F. Watts's association with Kensington lasted for more than fifty years. The key: incidents of his life and his, work were played out within the confines of this corner of London, from the grandeur of Holland House and the bohemian enclave at the rambling old Little Holland House to his own purpose-built studio house at 6 Melbury Road. Watts had an international reputation in the later nineteenth- century; he was quite simply one of the most famous artists in the world. Yet, unlike today's globetrotting celebrities, artists of the. Victorian era deployed their homes as the site of their reputations and none more so than Watts. New Little Holland House formed the backdrop to the artist's career. Most importantly, he created his own picture gallery as. a public space for the display. of his own art, a self-confident gesture aimed at 'his contemporaries and one that forecast how he shaped his own legacy for posterity. Although the actual house was demolished in the early 1960s, this . book presents an imaginative reconstruction of this later Victorian landmark, bringing it back to life with documentary photographs, architectural plans, drawings and watercolours. A full discussion recreates the setting and explores the thinking behind Watts's Little Holland House Gallery in Kensington. .