John William Godward, R.B.A.

Edward Crawshaw, London;
Peter Child, London;
Phillips, 14 June 1976, lot 162;
Sotheby’s, Belgravia, 6 December 1977, lot 51;
Richard Green, London;
Leger Galleries, London;
Christie’s, New York, 27 October 2004, lot 72

Vern Grosvenor Swanson, John William Godward, The Eclipse of Classicism, 1997, pp.113, 125, 246, illus. colour pl.102

STRUCTURE Original canvas. There is a light pattern of craquelure to her hair and headscarf; otherwise the work appears in good overall condition. ULTRAVIOLET LIGHT UV light reveals a few very minor flecks of retouching to the marble background and to the girl's cheek. FRAME Held in a moulded plaster frame.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Godward was a quiet and ultimately tragic man (he committed suicide in 1922) but the bleakness of his solitary life is never hinted at in his pictures which depict a perfect world of happiness and sunshine. Consumed by an almost obsessive interest in female beauty, Godward toiled away in his studio upon a series of paintings which explored the varying aesthetics of luscious female sexuality. Diaphanous Greek robes and backgrounds of cool reflective marble compound the exotic sensuality and suggest links to those smouldering courtesans of the ancient world; of Helen of Troy, Phryne and Campaspe. The title of this picture was taken from the name of a girl of Locris in Calabria, Megilla who was famous for her beauty. Godward painted a beautiful young model in profile, against a variegated marble wall. She is dressed in a sea-green diaphanous toga fastened at the shoulders with pearl buttons and tied at the arms with a purple ribbon. Her hair is twisted into an elaborate plait with a gold and purple scarf. Megillais a study in contracting surfaces and textures, the smooth, cool marble, warm rosy skin and crumpled fabric.

Megilla has equal dimensions as Praxilla also painted in 1921 (sold in these rooms, 12 June 2003, lot 215) in which the same model is depicted facing in the opposite direction, and it is possible that the two pictures were conceived as a pair. The model for both pictures was almost certainly an Italian girl named Marietta Avico, a professional artist’s model who lived at Tottenham Street off Tottenham Court Road. She appears to have been the model for all of the pictures known to have been painted by Godward in his last two years, including Ismene (Christie’s, South Kensington, 16 January 1980, lot 67), Crispinella (sold Sotheby’s, Belgravia, 12 June 1973, lot 144), and Contemplation of 1922 (sold in these rooms 15 June 1982, lot 40). When Godward died in December 1922 Marietta stated that she had known Godward for eighteen months, which would place their meeting in the spring of 1921 when the artist returned to London. Godward had been living in Rome for over ten years but the city had begun to lose its charm for him. It is likely that Rome’s art world had become too progressive for him and his paintings of classical women in marble settings were becoming anachronistic in a post-war world. Many of the artists that now rented studios at the Villa Strohl-Fern with Godward were Modernists with whom Godward had little artistic sympathy or similarities. With his mental and physical health failing Godward seems to have sought solace with his family back in London. However England was no more welcoming than Rome; the President of the Royal Academy and champion of classical art Edward Poynter had died in 1919 and most of the painters of Greek and Roman genre had passed away. However Godward’s art never lost its quality and the pictures painted in the last years of his life show no decline in his abilities. As Vern Swanson has observed Megilla is ‘one of the finest of the artist’s half-length profiles’ (Vern Grosvenor Swanson, John William Godward, The Eclipse of Classicism, 1997, p.113).