Sir William George Armstrong, 1st Baron Armstrong of Cragside (1810-1900)

Watts painted Sir William George Armstrong — industrialist, inventor, and philanthropist — in 1878, capturing one of the most remarkable self-made men of the Victorian age. Armstrong had built his fortune through hydraulic engineering and later through armaments manufacture, becoming one of Britain's leading industrialists while simultaneously investing his wealth in science, engineering, and the extraordinary house and garden of Cragside in Northumberland — the first house in the world lit by hydroelectric power. The National Trust preserves the canvas at Cragside, the property Armstrong built and which remains one of the great Victorian showplaces. Watts's willingness to paint Armstrong with his characteristic psychological seriousness, applying to an industrialist the same searching attention he gave to poets and statesmen, reflects his conviction that significant achievement — of whatever kind — merited serious pictorial investigation.

Watts works in his mature oil-on-canvas portrait manner, with the subject set against a loosely atmospheric background that frames the face as a study in concentrated intelligence. The composition is relatively simple — a three-quarter or bust-length view — that allows all expressive energy to reside in the physiognomy rather than in setting or attributes.