The Watts Cemetery Chapel or Watts Mortuary Chapel is a chapel in a Modern Style version of Celtic Revival in the village cemetery of Compton in Surrey. The designer was Mary Fraser-Tytler, an artist resident in the village, who married the painter and sculptor George Frederic Watts. While the overall architectural structure is loosely Romanesque Revival, the lavish decoration in terracotta relief carving and paintings is Celtic Revival, on an unusually large scale. According to the local council, it is "a unique concoction of art nouveau, Celtic, Romanesque and Egyptian influence with Mary's own original style".
Watts Cemetery Chapel
The doorway
Chapel view showing campanile
Chapel and altar
Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style)
The Modern Style is a style of architecture, art, and design that first emerged in the United Kingdom in the mid-1880s. It was the first Art Nouveau style worldwide, and it represents the evolution of the Arts and Crafts movement which was native to Great Britain. The Modern Style provided the base and intellectual background for the Art Nouveau movement and was adapted by other countries, giving birth to local variants such as Jugendstil and the Vienna Secession. It was cultivated and disseminated through the Liberty department store and The Studio magazine.
Poster by Frances MacDonald (1896)
Poster from 1896 by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. It pays homage to Celtic tradition and Japanese design and its style and form were repeated numerous times by "The Four", with the earliest examples from 1885 at the latest. It would be replicated by the Vienna Secessionists.
Walter Crane (1874) cover for toybook
Liberty (department store) (1875)