George Frederick Watts exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy, London, in 1865 as Design for a Larger Picture. He later executed a number of versions of the same subject, which was identified by Mrs. Watts as Time bearing a scythe and pressing forward through the stream of life hand in hand with his mate, Death. The figure of Judgment follows behind, holding a sword. In the last half of his career, Watts, a celebrated Romantic painter, favored allegories like Time, Death, and Judgment, which were influenced by his studies of the heroic forms of the Renaissance artist Michelangelo and the warm palette of Titian.
“The Works of Mr. George F. Watts, R.A. with a Complete Catalogue of his Pictures,” Pall Mall Gazette “Extra” no. 22 (1886), p. 32.
“The Art Sales of 1887,” Art Journal 49 (1887), p. 338.
Hugh Macmillan, The Life-Work of George Frederick Watts, R.A. (London, 1903), pp. 34, 236-242.
Mary Watts, George Frederic Watts (London, 1912), vol. 1, pp. 228, 235, 319, 327, vol. 2, p. 86.
R.M.F., “The Charles L. Hutchinson Bequest,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago, 19, 9, (December 1925), pp. 103, 104 (ill.).
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Chicago, 1961), p. 480.
Marilynn Anacker Board, “G.F. Watts, A Soldier in the Battle for an Art of Ideas” (Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1982), pp. 346, 393fn.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Victorian High Renaissance (Minneapolis, 1978), pp. 87-88, nos. 29a-29b.
London, Royal Academy of Arts, 1865, cat. 300, as Design for a larger picture.
London, Grosvenor Gallery, Summer Exhibition, 1878, cat. 62, as Time and Death.
London, Grosvenor Gallery, Winter Exhibition: Collection of the Works of G.F. Watts, R.A., 1881-1882, cat. 7.
University of Chicago, Renaissance Society, Paintings by Famous Pre-Raphaelites, November 17 – December 3 1939, no cat.
Peoria, Illinois, Lakeview Center for the Arts and Sciences, The Grand Tour: England, France, Italy, Greece, Egypt, May 15 – June 28, 1970, England, cat. 2 (ill.).
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