'Watchman, What of the Night?' (Dame Ellen Terry [1847-1928] and previously called Joan of Arc by Watts)

This painting of Dame Ellen Terry by Watts — titled 'Watchman, What of the Night?' with the parenthetical note that it was previously called 'Joan of Arc' — captures one of the most complex intersections in his career: his brief, troubled marriage to the actress Ellen Terry in 1864 and his subsequent lifelong engagement with her as a subject of fascination and admiration. Ellen Terry was a teenager when Watts, nearly thirty years her senior, married her in an arrangement widely understood as an attempt by Watts's circle to provide the gifted but unprotected girl with social respectability. The marriage was dissolved after less than a year. Yet Watts continued to paint Terry across decades, and his images of her constitute a remarkable record of his conflicted feelings. The title's ambiguity — is this a medieval heroine or a watchwoman asking about the future? — mirrors the painting's emotional complexity. The National Trust preserves the panel work at one of its properties.

Painted on panel in oil, the work shows Watts's warm atmospheric technique applied to a figure study charged with personal meaning. The rendering of Terry's distinctive features is careful and affectionate — this is not a generalised female type but a specific, deeply familiar face. The ambiguity of title and subject is reflected in the compositional treatment, which suggests a figure caught between worlds or identities.