English 1861-1922 Godward was a Victorian Neo-classicist, and therefore a follower in theory of Frederic Leighton. However, he is more closely allied stylistically to Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, with whom he shared a penchant for the rendering of Classical architecture, in particular, static landscape features constructed from marble. The vast majority of Godward's extant images feature women in Classical dress, posed against these landscape features, though there are some semi-nude and fully nude figures included in his oeuvre (a notable example being In The Tepidarium (1913), a title shared with a controversial Alma-Tadema painting of the same subject that resides in the Lady Lever Art Gallery). The titles reflect Godward's source of inspiration: Classical civilisation, most notably that of Ancient Rome (again a subject binding Godward closely to Alma-Tadema artistically), though Ancient Greece sometimes features, thus providing artistic ties, albeit of a more limited extent, with Leighton. Given that Classical scholarship was more widespread among the potential audience for his paintings during his lifetime than in the present day, meticulous research of detail was important in order to attain a standing as an artist in this genre. Alma-Tadema was, as well as a painter, an archaeologist who attended historical sites and collected artefacts that were later used in his paintings: Godward, too, studied such details as architecture and dress, in order to ensure that his works bore the stamp of authenticity. In addition, Godward painstakingly and meticulously rendered those other important features in his paintings, animal skins (the paintings Noon Day Rest (1910) and A Cool Retreat (1910) contain superb examples of such rendition) and wild flowers (Nerissa (1906), illustrated above, and Summer Flowers (1903) are again excellent examples of this). The appearance of beautiful women in studied poses in so many of Godward's canvases causes many newcomers to his works to categorise him mistakenly as being Pre-Raphaelite, particularly as his palette is often a vibrantly colourful one. However, the choice of subject matter (ancient civilisation versus, for example, Arthurian legend) is more properly that of the Victorian Neoclassicist: however, it is appropriate to comment that in common with numerous painters contemporary with him, Godward was a 'High Victorian Dreamer', producing beautiful images of a world which, it must be said, was idealised and romanticised, and which in the case of both Godward and Alma-Tadema came to be criticised as a world-view of 'Victorians in togas'.  Related Paintings of John William Godward :. | A Priestess | Godward Leaning on the Balcony | Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder | Erato at Her Lyre | He Loves Me He Loves Me Not |
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David Dalhoff Neal
(October 20, 1838 - May 2, 1915), was an American artist. David Dalhoff Neal was born to father Stephen Bryant Neal and mother Mary (Dalhoff) Neal, on Middlesex Street, in Lowell, Massachusetts. His grandparents were Stephen Neal, and David Dalhoff and Sally (Bean) Dalhoff of Canterbury, New Hampshire, Dolhoffs that emigrated from Russia in 1763, for whom he was named. His mother's family, the Beans, migrated from Holland in the early 1830s. His aunt Elizabeth Dolhoff was very artistic, and his uncle Jesse Dolhoff was a great singer. He attended Lowell grammar schools, and high school at Lawrence, Massachusetts. Deciding to devote himself to the study of art, he then attended art classes at the recently opened Andover Academy in Andover, New Hampshire. When Neal was 14, his father died and his fortunes were "impaired", so he set sail for New Orleans. Here at the age of 15, he worked the docks as a wharf clerk with a wood shipping firm dealing in Brazilian and Honduran mahogany.
Aristide Maillol
1861-1944 Banyuls-sur-Mer,was a French Catalan sculptor and painter. Maillol was born in Banyuls-sur-Mer, Roussillon. He decided at an early age to become a painter, and moved to Paris in 1881 to study art. After several applications, his enrollment in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts was accepted in 1885, and he studied there under Jean-Leon Gerome and Alexandre Cabanel. His early paintings show the influence of his contemporaries Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Paul Gauguin. Gauguin encouraged his growing interest in decorative art, an interest that led Maillol to take up tapestry design. In 1893 Maillol opened a tapestry workshop in Banyuls, producing works whose high technical and esthetic quality gained him recognition for renewing this art form in France. He began making small terra cotta sculptures in 1895, and within a few years his concentration on sculpture led to the abandonment of his work in tapestry. The subject of nearly all of Maillol's mature work is the naked female body, treated with a classical emphasis on stable forms. The figurative style of his large bronzes is perceived as an important precursor to the greater simplifications of Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti, and his serene classicism set a standard for European (and American) figure sculpture until the end of World War II. His important public commissions include a 1912 commission for a monument to Cezanne, as well as numerous war memorials commissioned after World War I. He died in Banyuls at the age of eighty-three, in an automobile accident.
Jan Provost
1465-1529 Flemish Jan Provost Gallery Jan Provoost, or Jan Provost (1462/5, Mons?CJanuary 1529, Bruges) was a Flemish painter. He was one of the most famous Netherlandish painters of his generation, a prolific master who left his early workshop in Valenciennes to run two workshops, one in Bruges, where he was made a burgher in 1494, the other simultaneously in Antwerp, which was the economic center of the Low Countries. Provoost was also a cartographer engineer and architect. He met Albrecht D??rer in Antwerp in 1520, and a D??rer portrait drawing at the National Gallery, London, is conjectured to be of Provoost. He married the widow of the miniaturist and painter Simon Marmion, after whose death he inherited the considerable Marmion estate. The styles of Gerard David and Hans Memling can be detected in Provoost's religious paintings. The Last Judgement painted for the Bruges town hall in 1525 is the only painting for which documentary evidence identifies Provoost. Surprising discoveries can still be made: in 1971 an unknown and anonymous panoramic Crucifixion from the village church at Koolkerke was identified as Provoost's. It is on permanent loan to the Groeninge Museum, Bruges.