George Frederic Watts
George Frederic Watts OM RA was a popular English Victorian painter and sculptor associated with the Symbolist movement. He said I paint ideas, not things. Watts became famous in his lifetime for his allegorical works, such as Hope and Love and Life. These paintings were intended to form part of an epic symbolic cycle called the House of Life, in which the emotions and aspirations of life would all be represented in a universal symbolic language.
Watts was born in Marylebone, London on the birthday of George Frederic Handel , to the second wife of a poor pianomaker. Delicate in health and with his mother dying while he was still young, he was homeschooled by his father in a conservative interpretation of Christianity as well as via the classics such as the Iliad. The former put him off conventional religion for life, whilst the latter was a continual influence on his art. He showed artistic promise very early, learning sculpture from the age ofwith William Behnes, starting to devotedly study the Elgin Marbles and then enrolling as a student at the Royal Academy at the age of 18. He first exhibited at the Academy in 1837. He also began his portraiture career, receiving patronage from his close contemporary Alexander Constantine Ionides, who later came to be a close friend.
Source: Wikipedia