Tranquility

Seated upon a marble bench, Godward has depicted a captivating Greek or Roman beauty, who softly stares out towards the distance, relaxing on a warm summer’s day. The sitter, known as ‘Dolcissmia’, has perfectly soft, rosy cheeks, plump lips and a glowing complexion. Her graceful pose adds to her sense of beauty and aesthetic perfection as does Godward’s sensual rendering of textures and harmonious colouring used throughout the canvas. From the coolness of the marble to the warm blush of the girl’s expectant lips, she is glamourous, youthful and sultry. The secluded nature of this marble seat evokes the probability of a secret rendezvous, where the seated maiden waits in tranquillity for her suitor.
Her classical robes create a sense of exotic sensuality by recalling the smouldering courtesans of the ancient world like Helen of Troy, Phryne and Campaspe. Painted during Godward’s Italian period, the artist has added a greater proportion of landscape elements to his composition while decreasing the scale of the central figure, a trend that carried over to his later watercolours.
Notably, Dolcissima’s beauty and appeal is emphasised when contrasted against the cool, hard marble that she sits on. This work is representative of the work of the group of painters sometimes called the “Marble” School, with the classical setting recalling Ancient Greece, which in turn shows the sitter as a Hellenic goddess. Inspired by the work of Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, John William Godward painted subjects which harked back to the Classical age. The Ancient worlds of Greece and Rome were viewed as a past idyll, an age of beauty and certainty.
This work was painted in Rome in the Villa Strohl-Fern, which was a group of artist studios which Godward had absconded to in 1911. It was here that the artist lived with the sitter, his favourite model which scandalised his family. The model is possibly the ‘Dolcissima’ that Russell Flint met when he visited Godward, as she is featured in many of Godward’s other works of that date.
The late Edwardian period was, like the classical world, lost forever shattered as it was by the events of the First World War. This Neoclassical approach with subjects drawn from ancient Greek and Roman life and placed in elaborate settings, with careful and realistic rendering of details like marble and flowers, is typical of Godward’s work.
John William Godward regularly exhibited his paintings at the Royal Academy in London, where they were greatly admired by the public. His work is represented in art galleries around the world, from the Getty Museum in California to the Manchester City Art Gallery in England.