Watts Gallery Today

By 2004 conditions at Watts Gallery had deteriorated so severely that it was deemed ‘at risk’. The importance of the gallery was reassessed, and one hundred years after it had first opened, the Trustees launched the Watts Gallery Hope Project. It sought to save the building and collection for another hundred years. Zombory-Moldovan Moore Architects added two new temporary exhibition spaces, the Showcase Gallery and the Exhibitions Gallery, as well as an outer workshop, equipped with a kiln, for a Learning Department. The Wattses had been keen to involve local communities in projects such as the Postman’s Park memorial in the City of London and the Watts Chapel. Following their example, the ‘Hope Wall’ on the outside of Watts Gallery’s Sculpture Gallery features ceramic tiles, reliefs and plaques. Through word and image it records the thoughts and memories of the current local community.

Collection

Ever since its foundation in 1904, Watts Gallery has continued to be the chief repository of G. F. Watts’s work. When Watts Gallery first opened, the collection included 109 core works, primarily finished oil paintings and a few sketches, all by G.F. Watts, donated by the artist from his London studio in Kensington. The collection was subsequently enriched by gifts from Mary Seton Watts and Lilian Chapman (née Macintosh, Watts’s adopted daughter), and has been expanding through other bequests and donations as well as new acquisitions.