John William Godward
John William Godward (9 August 1861 – 13 December 1922) was an English painter from the end of the Pre-Raphaelite/Neo-Classicist era. He was a protégé of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema but his style of painting fell out of favour with the arrival of painters like Picasso. He committed suicide at the age of 61 and is said to have written in his suicide note that "the world was not big enough" for him and a Picasso.
His already estranged family, who had disapproved of his becoming an artist, were ashamed of his suicide and burned his papers. No photographs of Godward are known to survive.
Early life
Godward was born in 1861 and lived in Wilton Grove, Wimbledon. He was born to John Godward (who was an investment clerk at The Law Life Assurance Society in London) and Sarah Eboral.[1]: 17–19
Godward was the eldest of five children and was named after his father John and grandfather William. He was christened at St. Mary's Church in Battersea on 27 October 1861. The overbearing attitude of his parents resulted in Godward's reclusive and shy ways later in adulthood.[1]: 22
Career
He exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1887. When he moved to Italy with one of his models in 1912, his family broke off all contact with him and even cut his image from family pictures. Godward returned to England in 1919, died in 1922 and is buried in Brompton Cemetery, west London.
One of his best known paintings is Dolce far Niente (1904), which currently resides in the collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber. As in the case of several other paintings, Godward painted more than one version, in this case an earlier (and less well known) 1897 version.
Works
Godward was a Victorian Neo-classicist, and therefore a follower in theory of Frederic Leighton. However, he is more closely allied stylistically to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, with whom he shared a penchant for the rendering of Classical architecture, in particular, static landscape features constructed from marble.
The vast majority of Godward's extant images feature women in Classical dress, posed against these landscape features, though there are some semi-nude and fully nude figures included in his oeuvre (a notable example being In The Tepidarium (1913), a title shared with a controversial Alma-Tadema painting of the same subject that resides in the Lady Lever Art Gallery). The titles reflect Godward's source of inspiration: Classical civilisation, most notably that of Ancient Rome (again a subject binding Godward closely to Alma-Tadema artistically), though Ancient Greece sometimes features, thus providing artistic ties, albeit of a more limited extent, with Leighton.
Given that Classical scholarship was more widespread among the potential audience for his paintings during his lifetime than in the present day, meticulous research of detail was important in order to attain a standing as an artist in this genre. Alma-Tadema was, as well as a painter, an archaeologist who attended historical sites and collected artifacts that were later used in his paintings: Godward, too, studied such details as architecture and dress, in order to ensure that his works bore the stamp of authenticity.
In addition, Godward painstakingly and meticulously rendered those other important features in his paintings, animal skins (the paintings Noon Day Rest (1910) and A Cool Retreat (1910) contain superb examples of such rendition) and wild flowers (Nerissa (1906), illustrated above, and Summer Flowers (1903) are again excellent examples of this).
The appearance of beautiful women in studied poses in so many of Godward's canvases causes many newcomers to his works to categorise him mistakenly as being Pre-Raphaelite, particularly as his palette is often a vibrantly colourful one. However, the choice of subject matter (ancient civilisation versus, for example, Arthurian legend) is more properly that of the Victorian Neoclassicist: however, it is appropriate to comment that in common with numerous painters contemporary with him, Godward was a 'High Victorian Dreamer', producing beautiful images of a world which, it must be said, was idealised and romanticised, and which in the case of both Godward and Alma-Tadema came to be criticised as a world-view of 'Victorians in togas'.
Godward "quickly established a reputation for his paintings of young women in a classical setting and his ability to convey with sensitivity and technical mastery the feel of contrasting textures, flesh, marble, fur and fabrics."[2] Godward's penchant for creating works of art set in the classical period probably came from the time period in which he was born. "The last full-scale classical revival in western painting bloomed in England in the 1860s and flowered there for the next three decades."[3]
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"The quiet pet", 1906 -
"Dolce far Niente", 1904 -
"When the heart is young", 1902
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List of works by the artist
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This list is not a complete list, but serves to illustrate the extent of Godward's output. |
Gallery
- John William Godward
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"A Priestess", 1894 -
"A Priestess 2" 1893 -
"Idle Thoughts", 1898 -
"The Mirror", 1899 -
"The Signal", 1899 -
"Idleness", 1900 -
"Summer Flowers", 1903 -
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"The Old Old Story", 1903 -
"In the Days of Sappho", 1904 -
"Youth and Time", 1901 -
"The Tambourine Girl", 1906 -
"A Grecian Girl", 1908 -
"Athenais", 1908 -
"Far Away Thoughts", 1892 -
"A Classical Beauty" -
"In the Tepidarium", 1913 -
"An Offering to Venus", 1912 -
"He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not", 1896 -
"Flabellifera", 1905
References
- ^ a b Swanson, Vern (1997). John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Antique Collectors' Club. ISBN 978-1-85149-270-1.
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ Swanson, Vern (1997). John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Antique Collector's Club. p. 91. ISBN 978-1-85149-270-1.
- ^ Gaines, Charles (1985). "Art: Those Victorian Ladies". Architectural Digest. 42: 125.
{{cite journal}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) - ^ Swanson, Vern (1997). John William Godward: The Eclipse of Classicism. Woodbridge, Suffolk, U.K.: Antique Collector's Club. pp. 172–176. ISBN 978-1-85149-270-1.
External links
- Biography of J W Godward by Vern Grosvenor Swanson
- Works by John William Godward at the Art Renewal Center
- John William Godward.org
- Godward at the Getty Museum
- Works of JW Godward at http://www.the-athenaeum.org
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