George Frederic Watts was an English painter and sculptor. In 1843 he won a prize in the competition for the decoration of the Houses of Parliament; no commission resulted from this, but he used the prize money to visit Italy, where the great Renaissance masters helped shape his elevated attitudes towards art. After returning to England in 1847, he established a solid reputation in intellectual circles, but popular fame did not come until the early 1880s, following exhibitions of his work in Manchester (1880) and London (1881).