Compton, Surrey
- Watts
Memorial Chapel and Cloister
Click on photos to enlarge.
Notes in italics from Surrey by Ian Nairn and Nikolaus Pevsner,
Revised by Bridget Cherry (1971),
Yale University Press, New Haven and London. |
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The Late Victorian painter G.F.
Watts (1817-1904) lived at Compton ...
His wife designed this burial chapel in 1896 ... The outside of the chapel
is a mixture of Italian Romanesque motifs, ornament derived from Celtic
manuscripts, and the heavy symbolism so dear to Late Victorian England:
'the ground plan symbolic of Eternity (a circle) through which runs the
Cross of Faith'. So the plan outside is a Greek cross with four curved
walls between the arms, with many bands of terracotta ornament delicately
and crisply cut, all with an elaborate symbolic intention ... The obvious
natural style for this would have been Art Nouveau, and had the artistic
climate been homogeneous Mrs Watts would naturally have used it. But in
England each small advanced group was working separately, and so the
chapel desperately attempts Art Nouveau effects from the outlandish
standpoint of the Celtic Revival. |
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The inside was designed in
1901, and this is Art Nouveau. It is a very startling and effective
room, though not a pleasant one because of the intolerable torpor and
weariness of the motifs. There is nothing like Mackintosh here - it is one
of the most soporific rooms in England. It is not architecturally great
either, because ornament and structure are not really related to one
another. The plan has become a circle with four deep embrasures
representing the arms of the cross, oddly vaulted by pairs of thick
parallel ribs, like the Monk's Kitchen at Durham. This vigorous structure
is completely covered by writhing decoration carried out entirely in
gesso, i.e. fibre soaked in plaster of Paris. Elongated angels hold cameos
in ornate frames looped downwards and linked to form a chain; more angels
above, cherubs' heads on the vaulting ribs, any bare space filled with Art
Nouveau curves. Heavy colours - dull gold, dark reds and greens - and
again a completely symbolic interpretation almost impossible to describe
and certainly impossible to infer from the room itself. ... |
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Watts ... is buried in the
churchyard in a cloister designed by Mrs Watts in a semi-Moorish Monreale
way, one more attempt at finding a style. |
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Map
Compton Church |
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