See John William Godward Paintings.
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.
Godward was born in 1861 and lived in Wilton Grove, Wimbledon.
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 artefacts 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'.
In Godward's work we see the final summation of half a millennium of Classical antique influence on Western painting. Next to Christianity it was by far the greatest outside influence on European painting. It vanished during Godward's generation -- killed, as it were, by contemporary nihilistic philosophies. While pointed references to Classicism continued, even unto today, the idealistic rhetoric accompanying it has died. During a period of rapidly declining interest in Greco-Roman antiquity courageous artists from the 19th century continued, against all odds, in this field for the first third of the 20th century.
List of works by the artist John William Godward.We offer 100% handmade paintings reproduction as below:
John William Godward Paintings Youth and Time 1901
John William Godward Paintings An Offering to Venus
John William Godward Paintings A Souvenir
John William Godward Paintings Nerissa
John William Godward Paintings A Tryst
John William Godward Paintings Phyleis
John William Godward Paintings Summer Flowers
John William Godward Paintings Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder,
John William Godward Paintings Under the Blossom that Hangs on the Bough,
John William Godward Paintings Dolce far niente,
John William Godward Paintings The Delphic Oracle,
John William Godward Paintings In the Tepidarium,
John William Godward Paintings La Pensierosa,
John William Godward Paintings A Cool Retreat 1910,
John William Godward Paintings Godward By the Wayside 1912,
John William Godward Paintings Godward Yes or No,
John William Godward Paintings The Old Old Story,
John William Godward Paintings Nu Sur La Plage,
John William Godward Paintings Venus at the Bath,
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other artist: Raphael Paintings Fra Angelico Paintings Maxfield Parrish Paintings Peter Paul Rubens Paintings