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John William Godward was born in 1858 and made his debut at the Royal Academy in 1886. He went on to exhibit regularly there and at the Royal Society of British Artists and became a Member of the latter Society in 1889.
Godward specialised in classical genre scenes featuring Grecian beauties in flowing robes, similar in style to Lawrence Alma-Tadema but with his own very personal variation. He chose his models with care, instead of drawing them from a large pool as was the wont of his contemporaries. This was partly due to his shy and sensitive nature, which also accounts for the small number of paintings he sent for exhibition during his lifetime. However, Godward's work reached great heights of popularity despite his lack of self-promotion.
The end of the First World War sounded the death knell of English classical art, of which Godward was one of the leading exponents. Intellectual modernism shouldered out the gentler genres and in the First World War the lushness of the English Neo-Classical school seemed crassly inappropriate. Sir Edward Poynter, a founder and leading exponent of the school, resigned as President of the Royal Academy in 1918; younger artists like Godward struggled on. By 1922, his heart broken by the harshness of the new world, Godward surrendered the unequal fight and gassed himself in the oven. Godward exhibited at the Royal Academy from 1887.
Dolce far Niente
John Godward
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Time to Play
John Godward
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Dolce Far Niente, 1904
John Godward
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Sweet Sounds, 1918
John Godward
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Sweet Sounds
John Godward
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Tender Thoughts
John Godward
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Crytilla (Restrike Etching)
John Godward
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Reverie, 1910
John Godward
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Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
John Godward
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The Favourite, 1901
John Godward
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The Toilet, 1900
John Godward
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The New Perfume, 1914
John Godward
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Nerissa, 1906
John Godward
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Cleonice, 1913
John Godward
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A red, red rose
John Godward
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Dancing Girl (Restrike Etching)
John Godward
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A Song Without Words
John Godward
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Noon-Day Rest, 1910
John Godward
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Song Without Words
John Godward
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Perilla, 1911
John Godward
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Under the Blossom that Hangs on the Bough, 1917
John Godward
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Cestilia, 1919
John Godward
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The Muse Erato At Her Lyre
John Godward
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Prints per page:
18
36
72
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