Oil paint on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
The Watts Gift
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/george-frederic-watts-586" aria-label="More by George Frederic Watts" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">George Frederic Watts</a>
Mammon
Presented by the artist 1897
actions: postures and motions
adults
avarice
birth to death
body
clothing and personal items
collapse
commerce
diseases and conditions
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
female
good and evil
gout
helmet
innocence
Judaeo-Christian imagery
kneeling
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
lying down
male
Mammon
man
miscellaneous
money
nudes
objects
people
power
religion and belief
religious and ceremonial
skull
social comment
society
Spenser, Edmund, ‘The Faerie Queen’
throne
universal concepts
woman
youth
<p>‘Mammon’ is a term from the Bible. It refers to riches and the corrupting influence of wealth. Here, Watts personifies Mammon as an ogre-like figure. He is shown sitting on a throne adorned with skulls, moneybags on his lap. Watts reveals Mammon’s ignorance through the ass’s ears on his golden crown. Young, beautiful worshippers are shown lifeless, crushed under his foot. Watts wrote in 1880: ‘Material prosperity has become our real god, but we are surprised to find that the worship of this visible deity does not make us happy.’ This dark subject was particularly commented on when the work was displayed at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the world fair held in Paris.</p><p><em>Gallery label, June 2021</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
8 February 2008 – 10 May 2009
2009-05-10
8 February 2008
2008-02-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2008-02-08
General Ambulatories
Collection based display
15 October 2010 – 20 February 2011
2011-02-20
15 October 2010 – 20 February 2011
2011-02-20
2010-10-15
Kunstmuseum Bern (Bern, Switzerland)
15 October 2010 – 20 February 2011
2011-02-20
2010-10-15
Zentrum Paul Klee (Bern, Switzerland)
http://www.zpk.org
2010-10-15
Seven Deadly Sins
Loan-out
1 November 2011 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
1 November 2011 – 19 February 2012
2012-02-19
2011-11-01
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
3 July 2012 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
2012-07-03
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
2011-11-01
Blake Exhibition
Loan-out
20 June 2017 – 26 November 2017
2017-11-26
20 June 2017 – 26 November 2017
2017-11-26
2017-06-20
Watts Gallery - Artists’ Village (Compton, UK)
http://www.wattsgallery.org.uk
2017-06-20
G.F.Watts: England's Michelangelo
Loan-out
26 May 2021 – 25 September 2022
2022-09-25
26 May 2021 – 25 September 2022
2022-09-25
2021-05-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2021-05-26
Watts’s Symbolical Paintings
Collection based display
Mammon
support: 1829 × 1060 mm
frame:  2150 × 1384 × 90 mm
Presented by <a href="/search?gid=999999783" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">the artist</a> 1897
<p>Watts, in common with such social commentators as William Morris, Ruskin and Carlyle, began to question the benefits and purpose of modern industry and commerce and their dehumanising effects. In 1880 he wrote, 'Material prosperity has become our real god, but we are surprised to find that the worship of this visible deity does not make us happy.' (G.F. Watts, 'The Present Conditions of Art'). Four years later he decided to personify this so-called deity - the evil 'Mammon' - in paint. 

</p><p>The picture is nearly life-size and the seated figure against a curtained backdrop calls to mind the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/portrait" title="Glossary definition for 'Portrait'"><span>portraits</span></a> of Titian. However, instead of an established figure or celebrated beauty, Watts depicts an object of revulsion, seated on a throne decorated with skulls.  Just behind the curtained background we are offered a glimpse, not of a peaceful <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a>, but of fire and destruction. The picture is painted in a rich, almost hellish palette of red, gold and black. Watts visualises Mammon as a brutish despot, an ugly, lumpen figure seated on his throne, nursing his moneybags on his lap.  The ogre brushes aside a beautiful girl with one hand, and crushes a young man under foot.  Both are symbols of youth, innocence and beauty; yet, naked and vulnerable, they are also lifeless and inert.  Mammon sits in glory with his 'gorgeous but ill-fitting golden draperies, which fall awkwardly about his coarse limbs' (M.H. Spielmann, 'The Works of Mr George F. Watts, R.A., with a Complete Catalogue of his Pictures,' <i>Pall Mall Gazette</i>, 1886, p.21).  In the oil study (Watts Gallery, Compton), Watts also gives Mammon a bandaged, gouty foot, a symptom of his indulgent and excessive lifestyle.

</p><p>Mammon's crown, with its upended gold coins and ass's ears, symbolises Mammon's ignorance and stupidity, but also links him with Ovid's King Midas, whose touch turned everything to gold and to whom Apollo gave ass's ears because he did not respond to the music of the lyre. The best-known literary reference to Mammon occurs in Spencer's <i>Faerie Queene</i>, book II, canto 7.  Spencer describes Mammon as tanned by soot from the blacksmith's forge, a detail that perhaps accounts for the smoke on the right hand side of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>.

</p><p>The subtitle of the picture - <i>Dedicated to his Worshippers</i> - is like an inscription on a monument. Watts apparently had plans to commission a <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>sculpture</span></a> of Mammon which would be set up in Hyde Park and 'where he hoped his worshippers would be at least honest enough to bow the knee publicly to him' (M.S. Watts, <i>George Frederic Watts: Annals of an Artist's Life, 1912</i>, vol.II, p.149). 

</p><p><b>Further reading:<br/></b>Andrew Wilton and Robert Upstone (eds), <i>The Age of Rossetti, Burne-Jones &amp; Watts: Symbolism in Britain 1860-1910</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 1997, pp.169-70, no.52, reproduced p.169, in colour.<br/>Christopher Wood, <i>Victorian Painting</i>, London 1999, pp.196-204.

</p><p>Frances Fowle<br/>November 2000<br/></p>
Summary
2005-09-15T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>‘Mammon’ is a term from the Bible. It refers to riches and the corrupting influence of wealth. Here, Watts personifies Mammon as an ogre-like figure. He is shown sitting on a throne adorned with skulls, moneybags on his lap. Watts reveals Mammon’s ignorance through the ass’s ears on his golden crown. Young, beautiful worshippers are shown lifeless, crushed under his foot. Watts wrote in 1880: ‘Material prosperity has become our real god, but we are surprised to find that the worship of this visible deity does not make us happy.’ This dark subject was particularly commented on when the work was displayed at the 1889 Exposition Universelle, the world fair held in Paris.</p>
</div>

Display caption
2021-06-07T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
actions: postures and motions adults avarice birth to death body clothing and personal items collapse commerce diseases and conditions emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas female good and evil gout helmet innocence Judaeo-Christian imagery kneeling literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) lying down male Mammon man miscellaneous money nudes objects people power religion and belief religious and ceremonial skull social comment society Spenser, Edmund, ‘The Faerie Queen’ throne universal concepts woman youth