A writer from Brighton has written a book about the Victorian painter George Frederic Watts whose work inspired Martin Luther King and Barack Obama.
The author Martin Kenig, 73, of Sussex Square, lives in a building used as a studio by Watts when he was based in Kemp Town.
He said: “Many Brighton residents will have heard of John Constable’s and JMW Turner’s association with Brighton and Hove. But that of another painter, George Frederic Watts, is less well known.
“Watts, celebrated in his time as ‘England’s Michelangelo’, was one of the greatest artists of the late Victorian age.
“He knew and painted the portraits of the major celebrities of the time, such as Gladstone and Tennyson.
“More recently, Watts’s famous painting Hope has inspired both Martin Luther King and Barack Obama, the latter renowned for using the phrase The Audacity of Hope.
“Much has been written about Watts, but my book is the first that gives a comprehensive account of the artist’s many visits to Brighton where he was based, mainly in Kemp Town, during the winter months.
“My focus for writing the book was that I have lived for many years in the building where Watts had one of these Kemp Town studios, and where he was engaged on several of his major pictures.
“This book describes the artist’s life and work in Brighton through the pictures which he painted there and the people whom he met.
“The record is enriched by (his wife) Mary’s reflections of this time and by the varied subjects of Watts’s letters written from his studios by the sea.”
The book is published in paperback by Grosvenor House Publishing and costs £6.99.
To order a copy, email City Books, in Western Road, Hove, at info@city-books.co.uk.
