The Dweller in the Innermost

George Frederic Watts's The Dweller in the Innermost (1885) belongs to the painter-prophet's most abstract allegorical production — works that push Victorian narrative painting toward pure symbol. The title alludes to the Christian concept of conscience or God as an inner presence — 'the dweller in the innermost' being a formulation for the divine spark or moral guide within each person. Watts, who engaged throughout his life with questions of spiritual truth and moral meaning, treated this concept with the monumental gravity he brought to all his allegorical subjects. The painting participates in late Victorian spiritual searching that sought to maintain religious meaning in a period of scientific rationalism.

Watts's most abstract allegories push toward the symbolic reduction of form — figures dissolve into gesture and color, specific identity giving way to archetypal presence. His palette in these works is muted and deeply toned — warm browns and ochres, dark greens, the colors of Old Master painting rather than Victorian brightness. The compositional treatment keeps form suggestive rather than defined, appropriate to a subject whose meaning is interior and ineffable rather than outwardly expressible.