The Historic Galleries with paintings on the wall and a nude sculpture in the centre — George Frederic Watts, *Aurora* in Historic Galleries

In Roman mythology, Aurora, the goddess of the dawn, would travel across the sky to announce the daily arrival of the sun. For many years George Frederic Watts wanted to make works based on this subject.

Working in both paint and plaster, he felt that he never fully succeeded. The strong and androgynous body of this sculpture recalls the work of the Italian Renaissance artist Michelangelo.

For Watts, this muscular figure was intended to suggest 'the fearless strength of the sun's rays dispersing all darkness and gloom'. A later version of Aurora, said to have been daringly geometric in form, was later destroyed by the artist.