George Frederic Watts, O.M., R.A.

Purchased from the artist by Sir William Agnew, BT.;
James Coates Gallery, New York;
Christie's, 15 December 1972, lot 137;
Black Sun Books, 1978-9;
Sotheby's, 19 June 1990, lot 64;
Private collection;
Sotheby's, 9 June 1998, lot 34, where purchased by the present owner

Royal Academy, Works by the Late G.F. Watts, R.A., 1905, no.68;
Manchester, Watts Memorial Exhibition, 1905, no.110;
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, Paintings and Drawings by Victorian Artists in England, 1965, no.161;
Wilmington, Delaware Art Museum, The Pre-Raphaelite Era, 1848-1914, 1976, no.4-45;
Manchester City Art Gallery, Minneapolis Institute of Art and Brooklyn Museum, Victorian High Renaissance, 1978-9, no.33;
Tokyo, Victorian Dreamers: Masterpieces of Neo-Classical and Aesthetic Movements in Britain, 1989, no.10

Julia Cartwright, George Frederic Watts, R.A., special number of Art Annual, 1896, pp.14-15, illustrated p.17;
Hugh Macmillan, The Life-Work of George Frederic Watts, R.A., 1903, pp.117-118, 271;
Mary Watts, Catalogue of the Work of G.F. Watts, unpublished MS at the Watts Gallery, Compton, vol.I, p.77;
R.E.D. Sketchley, Watts, 1904, p.180;
Julia Ellsworth Ford and Thomas W. Lamont (eds.), Pictures of George Frederic Watts, 1905, illustrated p.IX;
Christopher Wood, Olympian Dreamers, Victorian Classical Painters, 1860-1914, 1983, p.105

The canvas has an old lining. There are a few areas of fine craquelure on her dress and one small resulting spot of paint loss to the sash across her midriff. Ultraviolet light reveals some minor isolated spots of retouching in the upper left corner, below her right arm and near her left leg. There are very minor. Held in a Watts-style gilt frame.
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The artist's wife described Iris when it was being painted in the winter of 1892-3; 'a little opalescent goddess descending to earth through rainbow skies - a figure as transparent as if made with rain-drops' whilst Julia Cartwright recorded it as 'The latest, and, perhaps the loveliest, of these aerial dreams - Iris, the faery spirit of the rainbow... comes to us dancing on the raindrops, a vision of radiant life and joy.' The picture depicts the wife of Zephyrus who carried messages for the gods and goddesses of Olympus, flying through the skies on a rainbow. She was described by the poet Flaccus in lines attached to this painting by Watts:
'Like fiery clouds, that flush with ruddy glare,
Or Iris, gliding through the purple air;
When loosely girt her dazzling mantle flows,
And 'gainst the sun in arching colours glow'