George Frederick Watts, the great symbolical artist of “Love
and Death,” “Hope,” “Time, Death, and Judgment,” and other
famous pictures, painted “The Ruler.” Speaking of the picture
afterward he said, “Now I am doing a man’s back--little else but
his back, to explain ‘he went away sorrowful, for he had great
possessions.’ Fancy a man turning his back on Christ rather than
give away his goods! They say his back looks sorry; I don’t
know. It is what I meant his back to express.” (Text.)
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