to “Love Triumphant” (see Plate VI.).  In the one we see Time, represented by a mighty youth half clad in a red cloak, striding along with great vigour.  His companion, whom he holds by the hand, is Death, the sad mother with weary, downcast eye and outspread lap ready to receive her load; but with neither of them is the final word, for Judgment, poised in the clouds, wields his fiery sword of eternal law and holds the balance before his hidden face.  In “Love Triumphant” Love takes the place of, and transcends Judgment.  Time and Death having travelled together through the ages, are in the end overthrown, and Love alone rises on immortal wings.  Thus the stoical painter reaches his greatest height—­tells his best truth.

The Death Series.—­As may be expected, Death has no terrors for the fundamental Watts.  Never once does Death look with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, or grasp with bony fingers at the living.  In “Death Crowning Innocence,” as a mother she puts her halo on the infant Innocence, whom she claims.  Death holds a Court to which all must go—­priest, soldier, king, cripple, beautiful woman, and young child.  The lion must die, the civilisation be overthrown, wealth, fame, and pride must be let go—­so Watts shows in his “Court of Death”; all come to the end of the book marked Finis.  Death is calm and majestic, with angel wings, and overhead are the figures of Silence and Mystery, guarding, but partially revealing what is beyond the veil—­sunrise and the star of hope; while even in the lap of Death nestles a new-born babe—­the soul passing into new realms through the gates of Death.

Again, Death is the Messenger who comes, not to terrify, but as an ambassador to call the soul away from this alien land, quietly touching the waiting soul with the finger-tips.  In the beautiful “Paolo and Francesca” the lovers are seen as Dante told of them; wafted along by the infernal wind; of them he spoke: 

          “...  Bard!  Willingly
    I would address these two together coming,
    Which seem so light before the wind.”

Francesca’s reply to Dante is of Love and Death: 

    “Love, that in gentle heart is quickly learnt,
    Entangled him by that fair form...;
    Love, that denial takes from none beloved,
    Caught me with pleasing him so passing well,
    That as thou seest, he yet deserts me not. 
    Love brought us to one death.”

Watts has admirably caught the sweetness and sorrow of this situation in his beautiful picture, which, again, is one of the very few he considered finally “finished.”  It is almost a monochrome of blues and greys.

In “Time and Oblivion,” one of the earliest of the symbolical paintings, Time is again the stalwart man of imperishable youth, while Oblivion, another form of Death, spreads her mantle of darkness over all, claiming all.