John William Godward

John William Godward spent his career painting women in classical drapery leaning against marble, and did it with such consistency that the pictures can be hard to tell apart. Look longer and the appeal becomes clear. The marble is convincing, the fabric has weight, and the flesh tones are handled with real subtlety.

He followed Alma-Tadema’s example closely, arguably too closely, and worked in a manner that was already unfashionable when he started. His family disapproved of his career and reportedly destroyed his papers and cut him out of photographs after his death in 1922.

The pictures are decorative and make no claim otherwise. There is no narrative, rarely any incident, just a figure, a bench, a wall and the sea beyond. That refusal to tell a story is the most modern thing about them, though it was not read that way at the time.