John William Godward, R.B.A.

New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 9-10 March 1900;
London, Nathan Mitchell;
New York, Parke-Bernet Galleries, 11 May 1946, lot 50, bought by Henry Jordan;
Marguerite Marrington of Longview, Texas and thence by descent to Mary Harrington Carwell, Texas in 1993;
Private collection

Vern Grosvenor Swanson, John William Godward, The Eclipse of Classicism, 1997, p. 181, cat. no. 1891.3, repr. colour pl. 124

STRUCTURE The canvas has been lined. There is some extremely light abrasion to the extreme edges. There is a tiny fleck of media loss at the extreme upper right edge. There is some very light craquelure in places visible on close inspection. Otherwise the work is in good condition. UNDER ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT There are some small spots of cosmetic retouching towards the upper edge and to the right hand section of the sky and a tiny fleck to the centre of the figure's dress. There are some further small ares of retouching to the bottom of the figure's dress, to the lower left corner and to the lower left edge. FRAME Held in a lightly decorated gold painted frame in fair condition.
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A young girl clad in a blue and purple toga stands on a marble terrace high above the Mediterranean ocean. She admires a golden bethrothal ring given to her by her admirer who departs down the steps to her left. The subject and composition of John William Godward's The Engagement Ring was based upon Lawrence Alma-Tadema's A Foregone Conclusion of 1885 (Tate, London), the setting of which is almost identical. In Tadema's picture the apprehensive proposer has not yet presented the ring, whilst Godward depicted the maiden after she has accepted his offer of marriage.   

The model for the girl in The Engagement Ring was probably one of the famous Pettigrew sisters; Rose, Harriet (Hetty) or Lilian (Lily). The Scottish Pettigrews became the most popular models in London and posed for Wilson Steer, Whistler and Millais among others. Godward painted each of the sisters in the early 1890s in the period when the present picture was painted; Professor Swanson has dated The Engagement Ring to c.1891.

Godward was the son of an investment clerk and born into a  conservative and respectable family living in Battersea in London. His family were not supportive of his wish to become a painter but against their wishes he is believed to have studied 'rendering and graining' alongside fellow classicist William Clarke Wontner, probably learning to paint fake marble for fireplaces and furniture. Details of more formal artistic training have not been found but it is likely that he was a student at one of the many art schools in London, or possibly in Europe. In 1887 Godward had a picture accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy in London for the first time, a painting entitled The Yellow Turban. It was around this time that he began renting one of the Bolton Studios in Kensington in the heart of the London artist community. Godward continued to exhibit at the Royal Academy for almost two decades but by 1905 he felt that his style of painting was no longer receiving critical acclaim and he ceased to exhibit and sold his pictures through an agent and various art dealers. Despite his withdrawal from the public eye Godward enjoyed commercial success during his lifetime and the fact that he did not have to paint to please critics and the hanging committees of art galleries meant that he was able to paint what he wanted; the lovely ladies in roman garb surrounded by beautiful objects and flowers. 

In his study of Victorian painters of classical subjects Christopher Wood described Godward's career; '... the best, and the most serious of Alma-Tadema's followers was John William Godward... All his life he devoted himself only to classical subjects, invariably involving girls in classical robes on marble terraces, but painted with a degree of technical mastery that almost rivals that of Alma-Tadema. Godward was also an admirer of Lord Leighton, and his figures do sometimes achieve a monumentality lacking in the work of most of Alma-Tadema's followers.' (Christopher Wood, Olympian Dreamers, Victorian Classical Painters 1860-1914, 1983, p.247) Godward's admiration of Leighton is proved by a photograph of a model in his studio standing before a fireplace behind which is a large framed print of Leighton's famous The Garden of the Hesperides in which the female figures have a similar heavy languor to the maidens painted by Godward. Another modern writer has recognised the influence of Leighton in Godward's work; 'Godward's treatment of women is completely decorative. The drapery of Leighton, the slightly monumental cast of the figures, is used for decorative purposes.' (Joseph A. Kestner, Mythology and Misogyny, The Social Discourse of Nineteenth-Century British Classical-Subject Painting, 1989, p. 338).