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Arthur Watts (illustrator)
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Arthur Watts (illustrator)
Arthur George Watts DSO (1883–1935) was an illustrator and artist who was killed in an airplane crash in the Swiss Alps.
Watts was born in Rochester, Kent, in 1883, the son of Joseph Watts, Deputy Surgeon-General in the Indian Medical Service Indian Army, and his wife Alice. His father retired early, and the family lived in Dulwich and Norwood in south-east London, where the family usually employed a resident cook and housemaid, and a nurse while the children were young.
Educated at Dulwich College, Watts was a talented artist from an early age and inked funny drawings in the margins of his school books; at Crystal Palace Poster Academy, he was awarded a silver medal for merit in 1901. From the age of 17 he was educated at the Slade School of Fine Art, from where he went to the Free Arts Schools in Antwerp and then Paris, Moscow and Madrid. He was reportedly one of the London arts schools crowd who holidayed regularly in St Ives, Cornwall, during the Edwardian period.
Watts served in World War I in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, attaining the rank of commander and receiving the Distinguished Service Order for his bravery in the Zeebrugge Raid in 1918.
He received a temporary commission as sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in December 1914, and on 18 December 1915, he was promoted to temporary lieutenant. In command of motor launch ML.239 in April 1918, he played a distinguished part in the "combined operation" known as the Zeebrugge Raid, also participating in the operations at Ostend in May 1918 when HMS Vindictive was sunk to block the harbor entrance. Watts was awarded the Distinguished Service Order as an acting lieutenant-commander on 27 August 1918.
By 1904, he was providing humorous and other illustrations for papers such as the Tatler, The Bystander, Pearson's Magazine and London Opinion. In 1911, Watts was living with his wife of one year and their baby daughter Margaret at 21A Regents Park Road in central London, where he worked from a studio at home as a successful illustrator.
His first drawing for Punch, the English humour magazine, was published in 1912, and his work, particularly cartoons, continued to appear regularly until the time of his death, having become a regular feature after 1921. He also did four drawings a week for Radio Times; illustrated about a dozen books, including Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield; and designed travel posters for the railways and the London Underground. He edited and illustrated A Painter's Anthology.
Many of Watts' cartoons highlighted the class distinctions that existed in the UK in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. They offered a social commentary and an acute observation of differences in accent, vocabulary, dress, drinking habits, and even table manners. Some of his sharpest barbs were aimed at the "modern" art of the period, the nouveau riche, day trippers, social climbers and hen-pecked husbands. His contorted figures in paint, plaster and stone are clever caricatures of what he saw around him.
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Arthur Watts (illustrator)
Arthur George Watts DSO (1883–1935) was an illustrator and artist who was killed in an airplane crash in the Swiss Alps.
Watts was born in Rochester, Kent, in 1883, the son of Joseph Watts, Deputy Surgeon-General in the Indian Medical Service Indian Army, and his wife Alice. His father retired early, and the family lived in Dulwich and Norwood in south-east London, where the family usually employed a resident cook and housemaid, and a nurse while the children were young.
Educated at Dulwich College, Watts was a talented artist from an early age and inked funny drawings in the margins of his school books; at Crystal Palace Poster Academy, he was awarded a silver medal for merit in 1901. From the age of 17 he was educated at the Slade School of Fine Art, from where he went to the Free Arts Schools in Antwerp and then Paris, Moscow and Madrid. He was reportedly one of the London arts schools crowd who holidayed regularly in St Ives, Cornwall, during the Edwardian period.
Watts served in World War I in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, attaining the rank of commander and receiving the Distinguished Service Order for his bravery in the Zeebrugge Raid in 1918.
He received a temporary commission as sub-lieutenant in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve in December 1914, and on 18 December 1915, he was promoted to temporary lieutenant. In command of motor launch ML.239 in April 1918, he played a distinguished part in the "combined operation" known as the Zeebrugge Raid, also participating in the operations at Ostend in May 1918 when HMS Vindictive was sunk to block the harbor entrance. Watts was awarded the Distinguished Service Order as an acting lieutenant-commander on 27 August 1918.
By 1904, he was providing humorous and other illustrations for papers such as the Tatler, The Bystander, Pearson's Magazine and London Opinion. In 1911, Watts was living with his wife of one year and their baby daughter Margaret at 21A Regents Park Road in central London, where he worked from a studio at home as a successful illustrator.
His first drawing for Punch, the English humour magazine, was published in 1912, and his work, particularly cartoons, continued to appear regularly until the time of his death, having become a regular feature after 1921. He also did four drawings a week for Radio Times; illustrated about a dozen books, including Diary of a Provincial Lady by E M Delafield; and designed travel posters for the railways and the London Underground. He edited and illustrated A Painter's Anthology.
Many of Watts' cartoons highlighted the class distinctions that existed in the UK in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. They offered a social commentary and an acute observation of differences in accent, vocabulary, dress, drinking habits, and even table manners. Some of his sharpest barbs were aimed at the "modern" art of the period, the nouveau riche, day trippers, social climbers and hen-pecked husbands. His contorted figures in paint, plaster and stone are clever caricatures of what he saw around him.