I paint ideas, not things. My intention is less to paint works that are pleasing to the eye than to suggest great thoughts which will speak to the imagination and the heart and will arouse all that is noblest and best in man.

In the Bible (Hebrews, 6:19), hope is ‘an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil.’ Here [in Watts painting], Hope is blindfolded, seated on a globe and playing a lyre of which all but one of the strings are broken . . . Hope’s attempts to make music appear futile and several critics argued that the work might have been more appropriately titledDespair. Watts explained that ‘Hopeneed not mean expectancy. It suggests here, rather, the music which can come from the remaining cord’.

I paint ideas, not things. My intention is less to paint works that are pleasing to the eye than to suggest great thoughts which will speak to the imagination and the heart and will arouse all that is noblest and best in man.