Arthur Watts

Arthur George Watts DSO (1883–1935) was an illustrator and artist who was killed in an airplane crash in the Swiss Alps. Many of Watts' cartoons highlighted the class distinctions that existed in the UK in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. They offered a social commentary and an acute observation of differences in accent, vocabulary, dress, drinking habits, and even table manners. Some of his sharpest barbs were aimed at the "modern" art of the period, the nouveau riche, day trippers, social climbers and hen-pecked husbands. His contorted figures in paint, plaster and stone are clever caricatures of what he saw around him.