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Love and Death

Artist/Maker (English, 1857–1945)
after (English, 1817–1904)
Date1900
MediumMezzotint heightened with chalk; retouched by Watts
DimensionsImage: 22 7/8 × 10 5/8 in. (58.1 × 27 cm)
Plate: 24 1/2 × 11 7/8 in. (62.2 × 30.2 cm)
Sheet: 29 5/8 × 18 in. (75.3 × 45.7 cm)
Mount: 31 × 18 in. (78.7 × 45.7 cm)
Credit LineCharles F. Olney Fund
Object number1974.21
Status
Not on view
More Information
George Frederic Watts's Love and Death was one of the most important paintings at the 1877 opening of the Grosvenor Gallery, an alternative exhibition space that catered to the Aesthetic Movement. The subject, which Watts described as "the passionate though unavailing struggle to avert the inevitable," was the first of his "symbolical" pictures-over life-size canvases of grand, universal themes. Engraver Frank Short was instrumental in reviving mezzotints in the late Victorian period.
Exhibition History
Out of Albion: British Art from the Allen Memorial Art Museum
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (August 26, 2008 - December 23, 2008 )
Between Fact and Fantasy: The Artistic Imagination in Print
  • Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, OH (January 17, 2014 - June 22, 2014 )
Collections
  • Modern & Contemporary