George Fiddes Watt

George Fiddes Watt (15 February 1873 – 22 November 1960) was a Scottish portrait painter and engraver.

Biography
Watt studied art at Gray's School of Art, Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. He was elected to the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) in 1924 and received an honorary LL.D. degree from the University of Aberdeen in 1955.

Watt was sculpted by Henry Snell Gamley in 1912, Watt's son Albert having been sculpted by Gamley four years previously. A bronze statue of Watt by Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones, made in 1942, is in Aberdeen.

Works
Watt's large output includes paintings of many famous people of his time in Britain. An exception among the many portraits is a landscape, J. P. Inverarity Mauled by a Lioness, Somaliland .

Portraits

 * Lawyers
 * Viscount Haldane (Lincoln's Inn)
 * Viscount Reading (Middle Temple)


 * Divines
 * William Paterson Paterson


 * Scientists
 * Sir J. J. Thomson (Royal Society)


 * Politicians
 * H.H. Asquith
 * A.J. Balfour (National Portrait Gallery)
 * Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon
 * Sir William Slater Brown, Lord Provost of Edinburgh


 * Academics
 * Thomas Martin Lindsay

Mezzotint engravings

 * Robert Bannatyne Finlay (Royal Courts of Justice)

Collections and exhibitions
Watt's work was exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1906 to 1930. His portrait of his mother is in the Tate Gallery's collection.

Family
His third son, Alexander Stuart Watt (1909–1967) was a journalist based in Paris. Alastair Fiddes Watt (b. 1954) is also a landscape painter.