one for making reduced copies, another for taking facsimiles by means of a light stiff frame, which carried a pointer over the surface of the work while a revolving tool fixed to the frame alongside of the pointer cut a corresponding surface on a suitable block. We find him in correspondence with Sir Francis Chantrey about this machine not many months before his death, and presenting copies of busts to his friends as the work “of a young artist just entering on his eighty-third year.” His life drew to a tranquil close, and the end came at Heathfield on the 19th of August 1819. His remains were interred in the neighbouring parish church of Handsworth.
Watt was twice married—first in 1763 to his cousin Margaret Miller, who died ten years later. Of four children born of the marriage, two died in infancy; another was James (1769-1848), who succeeded his father in business; the fourth was a daughter who lived to maturity, but died early, leaving two children. His second wife, Anne Macgregor, whom he married before settling in Birmingham in 1775, survived him; but her two children, Gregory and a daughter, died young.
Some of Watt's minor inventions have been already noticed. Another, which has proved of great practical value, was the letter-copying press, for copying manuscript by using a glutinous ink and pressing the written page against a moistened sheet of thin paper. He patented this in 1780, describing both a roller press, the use of which he seems to have preferred in copying his own correspondence, and also the form of screw press now found in every merchant's office.
In the domain of pure science Watt claims recognition not only as having had ideas greatly in advance of his age regarding what is now called energy, but as a discoverer of the composition of water. Writing to Joseph Priestley in April 1783, with reference to some of Priestley's experiments, he suggests the theory that “water is composed of dephlogisticated air and phlogiston deprived of part of their latent or elementary heat.” It difficult to determine the exact meaning attached to these antiquated terms, and to say how far Watt's suggestion anticipated the fuller discovery of Cavendish. Watt's views were communicated to the Royal Society in 1783, Cavendish's experiments in 1784, and both are printed in the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions.
The early and middle part of Watt's life was a long struggle with poor health: severe headache prostrated him for days at a time; but as he grew old his constitution seems to have become more robust. His disposition was despondent and shrinking; he speaks of himself, but evidently with unfair severity, as “indolent to excess.” “I am not enterprising,” he writes; “I would rather face a loaded cannon than settle an account or make a bargain; in short, I find myself out of my sphere when I have anything to do with mankind.” He was a man of warm friendships, and has left a personal memorial of the greatest interest in his numerous letters. They are full of sagacity and insight: his own achievements are told with a shrewd but extremely modest estimate of their value, and in a style of remarkable terseness and lucidity, lightened here and there by a touch of dry humour. In his old age Watt is described by his contemporaries as a man richly stored with the most various knowledge, full of anecdote, familiar with most modern languages and their literature, a great talker. Scott speaks of “the alert, kind, benevolent old man, his talents and fancy overflowing on every subject, with his attention alive to every one's question, his information at every one's command.”
See J. P. Muirhead, Origin and Progress of the Mechanical Inventions of James Watt (3 vols., 1854; vols. i. and ii. contain a memoir and Watt's letters; vol. iii . gives a reprint of his patent specifications and other papers); Muirhead, Life of Watt (1858); Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt; Williamson, Memorials of the Lineage, &c., of James Watt, published by the Watt Club (Greenock, 1856); Correspondence of the late James Watt on his Discovery of the Theory of the Composition of Water, edited by Muirhead (1846); Cowper, “On the Inventions of James Watt and his Models preserved at Handsworth and South Kensington,” Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. (1883); article “Watt” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (6th edition, 1823), by James Watt, junior; Robison, Mechanical Philosophy, vol ii. (1822) (letters and notes by Watt on the History of the Steam-Engine) (J. A. E.)
WATTEAU, ANTOINE (1684-1721), French painter, was born in Valenciennes, of humble Flemish origin. Comte de Caylus, his staunch friend of later years, and his first biographer, refers to Watteau's father as a hard man, strongly disinclined to accede to his son's wish to become a painter; but other accounts show him in a kinder light—as a poor, struggling man, a tiler by trade, who secured for his son the best possible education. Certain it is that at the age of fourteen Watteau was placed with Gérin, a mediocre Valenciennes painter, with whom he remained until 1702. It is to be assumed that he learnt far more from the study of Ostade's and Teniers's paintings in his native town than from his first master's teaching. Not only in subject-matter, but in their general tonality, his earliest works, like “La Vraie Gaieté,” which was in the collection of Sir Charles Tennant, suggest this influence. Gérin died in 1702, and Watteau, almost penniless, went to Paris, where he found employment with the scene-painter Métayer. Things, however, went badly with his new master, and Watteau, broken down in health and on the verge of starvation, was forced to work in a kind of factory where devotional pictures were turned out in wholesale fashion. Three francs a week and meagre food were his reward, but his talent soon enabled him to paint the St Nicolas, the copying of which was allotted to him, without having to refer to the original. Meanwhile he spent his rare leisure hours and the evenings in serious study, sketching and drawing his impressions of types and scenes. His drawings attracted the attention of Claude Gillot, an artist imbued with the spirit of the Renaissance, who after having successfully tried himself in the mythological and historical genre, was just at that time devoting himself to the characters and incidents of the Italian comedy. Gillot took Watteau as pupil and assistant, but the young man made such rapid progress that he soon equalled and excelled his master, whose jealousy led to a quarrel, as a result of which Watteau, and with him his fellow-student and later pupil, Lancret, severed his connexion with Gillot and entered about 1708 the studio of Claude Audran, a famous decorative painter who was at that time keeper of the collections at the Luxembourg Palace. From him Watteau acquired his knowledge of decorative art and ornamental design, the garland-like composition which he applied to the designing of screens, fans and wall panels. At the same time he became deeply imbued with the spirit of Rubens and Paolo Veronese, whose works he had daily before him at the palace; and he continued to work from nature and to collect material for his formal garden backgrounds among the fountains and statues and stately avenues of the Luxembourg gardens. His chinoiseries and singeries date probably from the years during which he worked with Audran.
Perhaps as a recreation from the routine of ornamental design, Watteau painted at this time “The Departing Regiment,” the first picture in his second and more personal manner, in which the touch reveals the influence of Rubens's technique, and the first of a long series of camp pictures. He showed the painting to Audran, who, probably afraid of losing so talented and useful an assistant, made light of it, and advised him not to waste his time and gifts on such subjects. Watteau, suspicious of his master's motives, determined to leave him, advancing as excuse his desire to return to Valenciennes. He found a purchaser, at the modest price of 60 livres, in Sirois, the father-in-law of his later friend and patron Gersaint, and was thus enabled to return to the home of his childhood. In Valenciennes he painted a number of the small camp-pieces, notably the “Camp-Fire,” which was again bought by Sirois, the price this time being raised to 200 livres; this is now in the collection of Mr W. A. Coats in Glasgow. Two small pictures of the same type are at the Hermitage in St Petersburg.
Returning to Paris after a comparatively short sojourn at Valenciennes, he took up his abode with Sirois, and competed in 1709 for the Prix de Rome. He only obtained the second prize, and, determined to go to Rome, he applied for a crown pension and exhibited the two military pictures which he had sold to Sirois, in a place where they were bound to be seen by the academicians. There they attracted the attention of de la Fosse, who, struck by the rare gifts displayed in these works, sent for Watteau and dissuaded him from going to Italy, where he had nothing to learn. It was to a great extent due to de la Fosse and to Rigaud that Watteau was made an associate of the Academy in 1712, and a full member in 1717, on the completion of his diploma picture, “The Embarkment for Cythera,” now at the Louvre. A later, and even more perfect, version of the same subject is in the possession of the German emperor. It is quite possible that the superb portrait of Rigaud by Watteau
