uaintance with the beautiful country lying south of the Hog's
Back; and in 1889 he chose a site at Compton, where he decided to build
a house. To this he gave the name of Limnerslease. Thanks to the
generosity of Mrs. Watts, who has built a gallery and hung some of his
choicest pictures there, Compton has become one of the three shrines to
which lovers of his work resort.[36]

[Note 36: His allegorical subjects are in the Tate Gallery; his
portraits in the National Portrait Gallery.]

But for many years he met with little recognition from the world at
large. It was only at the age of 50 that he received official honours
from the Royal Academy, though the success of his cartoons had marked
him out among his contemporaries twenty-five years earlier. About 1865
his pictures won the enthusiastic admiration of Mr. Charles Rickards,
who continued to be the most constant of his patrons, and gave to his
admiration the most practical form. Not only did he purchase from year
to year such pictures as Watts was willing to sell, but twenty years
later he organized an exhibition of Watts's work at Manchester, which
did much to spread his fame in the North. In London Watts came to his
own more fully when the Grosvenor Gallery was opened in 1877. Here the
Directors were at pains to attract the best painters of the day and to
hang their pictures in such a way that their artistic qualities had full
effect. No one gained more from this than Watts and Burne-Jones; and to
a select but growing circle of admirers the interest of the annual
exhibitions began and ended with the work of these two kindred spirits.
The Directors also arranged in 1881 for a special exhibition devoted to
the works of Watts alone, when, thanks to the generosity of lenders, 200
of his pictures did justice to his sixty years of unwearied effort.
This winter established his fame, and England now recognized him as one
of her greatest sons. But when his friends tried to organize a dinner to
be held at the Gallery in his honour, he got wind of the plot, and with
his usual fastidious reserve begged to be spared such an ordeal. The
_elite_ of London society, men famous in politics, literature, and other
departments of public life, were only too anxious to honour him; but he
could not endure to be the centre of public attention. To him art was
everything, the artist nothing. Throughout his life he attended few
banquets, mounted fewer platforms, and only wished to be left to e