Art Blogging: John William Godward

This is the sixth day in a seven-day series on my favorite artists and their works. Today's featured artist is British Neoclassicist John William Godward (1861-1922).

Godward, it is said, was the last of the Neoclassicists. The tradition's last gasps of breath sputtered out when Godward died. He was an unhappy man: scorned by critics as a cheap imitator of Alma-Tadema who produced endless reams of Greco-Roman women on canvas. His family disdained an artistic career and Godward was likely compelled to study as a third-rate local school. By 1887, he was accepted in the artistic community in London. Eventually, he achieved enough commercial success to earn a living at his craft -- barely. But by 1911, the London scene had so completely abandoned Classical subject matter and style that he fled to Rome, taking one of his models as a lover. Godward's puritanical family was disgraced by this conduct and expelled him from their association. In Rome, Godward joined the last community of Neoclassicists from all over Europe. But eventually, even that stronghold of faithful artists fell before the Modernist onslaught, and Godward returned to London in 1921 to partially reconcile with his family. Unable to succeed professionally, he killed himself the next year.

The critics were right: Godward only did one thing. His corpus of work consists almost entirely of beautiful young women in diaphanous gowns on marble porches and benches. He only did one thing -- but he did it exceptionally well. His romanticism is flawless; his idealism perfectly executed.

If you pull up large shots of his paintings, you'll see elaborate draping. Here's a good example. I've never seen any other artist that can approach his technical skill and passion with this tremendously challenging artistic task.

To the right, you'll find "Yes or No?" I guess that you may have figured out by now that I'm a romantic at heart. It shows in my choice of artwork. The young man asks; the woman dodges. How blessed am I that my wife's response came within a few seconds!