excerpt from the book..A BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINEIn July of 1904 the eighty-seven mortal years of George Frederick Wattscame to an end. He had outlived all the contemporaries and acquaintancesof his youth; few, even among the now living, knew him in his middleage; while to those of the present generation, who knew little of theman though much of his work, he appeared as members of the Ionidesfamily, thus inaugurating the series of private and public portraits forwhich he became so famous. The Watts of our day, however, the teacherfirst and the painter afterwards, had not yet come on the scene. Hisfirst aspiration towards monumental painting began in the year 1843,when in a competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament hegained a prize of L300 for his cartoon of "Caractacus led Captivethrough the Streets of Rome." At this time, when history was claimingpictorial art as her servant and expositor, young Watts carried off theprize against the whole of his competitors. This company included thewell-known historical painter Haydon, who, from a sense of theimpossibility of battling against his financial difficulties, and fromthe neglect, real or fancied, of the leading politicians, destroyedhimself by his own hand.