John William Godward R.B.A. 1861-1922

Royal Academy, 1896, no. 521

Warm, living, feminine flesh is contrasted with cold polished marble and mosaic and the carved relief of a naked male priest of Bacchus, in Campaspe by John William Godward. Here is not a pale, tragic and fragile ingénue as may have been painted in the middle years of the nineteenth century, but a more red-blooded, confident woman of the end of the century, monumental, seductive and languorous. She is bedecked with violets and carries a golden wand which she strokes playfully with her forefinger whilst she gazes out alluringly at her admirers. Her full lips, blushed cheeks and somnolent eyes add to the erotic charge of Campaspe, one of Godward’s largest and most ambitious paintings. A contemporary lost picture by Godward entitled Calypso (depicting the enchantress who held Odysseus in blissful captivity on his return from the Trojan War) appears to depict the same model crowned with a garland of violets. These flowers were dedicated to Venus after she turned a bevy of beautiful Roman girls into violets after her son Cupid claimed that their beauty rivalled hers.

Campaspe (also known as Pancaste) was the delectable concubine of Alexander the Great, who desiring to have her beauty immortalised, commissioned the greatest of all classical artists Apelles to paint her portrait. The resulting long-lost picture depicted the naked girl in the guise of Venus Anadyoneme (Venus wringing her hair after rising from the sea) was said to be both erotic and virtuous and delighted Alexander to such an extent that he resolved to give Campaspe to Apelles who had fallen in love with the girl as he painted her. The story of Alexander, Apelles and Campaspe, told by Pliny the Elder in Book XXXV of the Natural History, has been interpreted as an apocryphal allegory of Alexander’s generosity. The subject appealed to artists who wished to be identified with the famed Apelles, able to create beautiful imagery and to be honoured as a result. It also appealed to the powerful patron, who liked to imagine himself as another world ruler and magnanimous sponsor of the arts.

Campaspe caused Godward’s agent Thomas McLean some confusion when he was asked to find a buyer for the painting as he was unsure which of Godward’s beautiful maidens she was; ‘You give such classical names to your pictures I don’t know which is Campaspe’ (Swanson, p. 56).  Godward had left visual clues to the identity of Campaspe but the vague  classical iconography is indicative of late nineteenth century interpretation of mythology and history which was adapted to suit the motives of patrons and painters. Thus the titles are interchangeable and the primary effect of the pictures is decorative rather than narrative or archaeological. The pair of carved sphinxes and the marble medallion of the priest identified by his leopard-skin and thrysus (ceremonial baton), add to the archaic exoticism of the painting and give the nude a historic context. They also suggest the splendour of Alexander’s court, a lavishly decorated pleasure palace at Larissa in Thessaly.

It is likely that the girl depicted in Campaspe was Florence (Florrie) Bird, a professional model who worked at the Royal Academy Life Drawing Schools and posed for several artists, including another painter of classical subject, Herbert Draper. Draper painted her in The Lament for Icarus in 1898 (Tate) and as a similarly monumental nude in his large painting of 1900 The Gates of Dawn (Draper’s Hall, London). She certainly posed for Godward in 1896 when he painted Thoughts Far Away which is subtitled Portrait of Mary Bird (location unknown). Godward employed professional models for his paintings, including Ethel Warwick and the famous Pettigrew sisters as he felt that they were better able to hold the strenuous poses he often demanded and that they were not reluctant to pose naked. The choice of a professional model for the figure of Campaspe is more than apt. 

The fact that Campaspe is leaning against her own diaphanous robes and the ribbons which had bound them around her now exposed form, add to the eroticism of the painting as they suggest the undressing of a real woman rather than the perpetual nudity of nymphs and goddesses. A comparable painting of 1898 entitled Circe, depicting the voluptuous sorceress of Aeaea from the Iliad, depicts a similarly posed nude in an exotic interior. Although this painting is now lost, other examples of large nudes by Godward include Venus Binding Her Hair and the Delphic Oracle (both in private collections). This group of pictures share a monumentality of scale and a focus upon statuesque naked women. It would seem that at this period Godward was seeking to impress reviewers by painting large-scale nudes and Campaspe was indeed well received at the Royal Academy Summer exhibition of 1896 and was celebrated by the writer A. G. Temple; ‘J. W. Godward, too in his straightforward and clear delineation of form so wholesomely academic in its workmanship has instanced his uncommon capacity in many examples, of which few are finer than the ‘Campase’ [sic] of 1896.’ (A.G. Temple, The Art of Paintings in the Queen’s Reign, 1897, p. 371).