J.W. Godward 1861-1922 by ACC Art Books

J.W. GODWARD 1861-1922

The Eclipse of Classicism Vern Grosvenor Swanson, Ph.D.

THE GODWARDS: ORIGIN AND BACKGROUND Godward is a fairly rare patronymic surname. It is probably of Danish Viking origin from about the tenth century. The Godwards lived under the Danelaw and populated East Anglia, later Kent, and eventually migrated to London. The earliest known written references to the name are to a Wilianus Filius Godwardi in the twelfth century. An Alicia Godward is recorded in the Ramsey Abbey, Huntingdonshire in 1252 and a John Godward appears in the Subsidy Roll for 1568 in Suffolk. The derivation of the name Godward is from the late Old English ‘god or good’ and ‘weard’ connoting ‘protector’, together meaning ‘good protector’.1 Though none of the Godward forebears has found their way into the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, as John William has, they seem to have been solid citizens.2 John William Godward (1861‒1922), the artist, was the first and only viable candidate for this honour; he is now in the ODNB. It seems as though each alternate generation tended to name its eldest son John, and then the next

generation, William. Our artist’s family in fact followed this course. John William Godward’s great-great grandfather was named William; he was born on 11 August 1737 and died in 1823. Living eighty-six years, he certainly set a family trait for longevity. He was married to an Ann Robinson, who also died in 1823. She bore him five children, all carrying the common given names of John, Mary, Ann, William and Elizabeth. The youngest of the elder William’s children, John Godward Sr., was born on 27 August 1777 in England. He was married to Hannah Frost, who gave him four children. When John died on 24 March 1836, he was living at No. 22 Cornford Grove off Bedford Hill in Balham, Surrey. Balham was then a rural town, situated between Battersea and Wimbledon. John Godward Sr.’s firstborn, William Godward Sr., was born on 12 April 1801 and lived at No. 30 Marguerite Terrace, Chelsea, in a big and very beautiful house, behind the Chelsea Town Hall. William Godward Sr. (Plate 1) married Mary Perkinton (Plate 2) on 27 October 1827 and was blessed with seven children.

Plate 1. William Godward (1801–1893) grandfather of the artist John William Godward.

Plate 2. Mary Perkinton Godward (1805–1866) married William Godward on 27 October 1827.

Plate 3. John Godward (1836–1904) father of John William Godward.

Plate 4. John Godward in 1898.

Plate 5. Sarah Eboral (1835–1935) married John Godward on 29 June 1859.

Plate 6. Sarah Eboral, mother of John William Godward.

They had four sons and two daughters who lived to maturity. During the 1851 census they lived at No. 27 Markham Street in Balham. After his wife died he moved to the family home at No. 22 Cornford Grove and died there an elderly man on 5 March 1893. William Godward was generally credited with developing the family financial direction, being a clerk in a life assurance office. It was he who had established the family fortune by investing in the Great Northern Railway.3 The fourth child, John Godward (Plates 3 and 4) was the father of the object of our study, John William, the artist. John Godward was born on 27 November 1836 in Balham,4 and was christened in Paddington, London. He married the twenty-four year old, Sarah Eboral (Plates 5 and 6) on 29 June 1859 at a church in Chelsea. Between June and October of that year they moved to No. 2 Woodbine Cottages, Bridge Road West (now called Westbridge Road). It was located in a smarter district of Battersea, then a part of Surrey, but now incorporated into London. At that time Battersea and Wandsborough were quiet rural riverside villages on the south banks of the River Thames. A mixed area, Battersea had some slum dwellings close to the river and many factories along the banks of the Thames. The Godwards lived in a nicer precinct. The row houses of the Woodbine Cottages, built about 1851, were just the kind of place one would expect a newly-wed couple to rent,5 but

during the 1860s until the 1870s the area began to grow dramatically. By the 1880s and 1890s most of the large open tracts, once used for market gardening, had disappeared under bricks and mortar as London expanded southwards. John Godward, like his father and brother William, worked as an investment clerk in a life assurance office. Specifically he worked for the Law Life Assurance Society on Fleet Street in London’s financial district. His younger brother Arthur was a banker’s clerk, while his brother George was a builder’s clerk. John seems to have been quite successful, though not rich. Although he was the fourth son he inherited more than his share of his father’s estate.6 The John Godward family would have been considered respectable, bourgeois and puritanical. They had five children. While John Godward lived to the age of 68, dying on 16 August 1904, his wife Sarah Eboral lived to be over a century. She received a letter of congratulations from the Queen Mother on her hundredth birthday. Sarah died at her home, No. 18 Denmark Hill in Wimbledon on 29 December 1935 aged one hundred years, seven months and twelve days. She outlived her son John William by thirteen years and was instrumental in maintaining his anonymity. The other Godward lines seem to have been equally energetic, long lived, financially successful and proper. It was into this ostensibly respectable bourgeois family and ideal Victorian home that John William Godward, the object of our interest, was born.

THE ARTIST’S YOUTH (1861–1878) John Godward’s twenty-six year old wife, Sarah Eboral, gave birth to their first child on Friday, 9 August 1861. The baby, John William Godward, was born at home, at No. 2 Woodbine Cottages on Bridge Road West (now Westbridge Road) in Battersea. John William was named after his father ‘John’ and grandfather ‘William’ and was christened at St. Mary’s Church in Battersea on 27 October 1861. John William’s parents were, according to Gilbert Milo-Turner, members of the High Church of England.7 Four more children were born to the family (Plate 7).8 The second child, Alfred Godward (Monday, 7 Dec 1863‒19 Jun 1943) (Plate 8) was also born at No. 2 Woodbine Cottages in Battersea. Alfred became an insurance officer, like his father, and lived to be nearly

eighty years old. He married the once wed Margaret Louisa Turner Smith on 1 August 1893 in Horbling, Lincolnshire.9 Alfred and Margaret Godward lived at No. 39 Culverdon Road in Balham from 1894 to 1904. Culverdon Road leads off from Cornford Grove, where other family members lived. They had three sons and a daughter. The oldest was Cuthbert (Balham, 27 Jul 1894‒1964) who married Ivy Barr of Walton-onThames in Surrey. Cuthbert and Ivy lived for a short time in 1922 at No. 410 Fulham Road, the home of the artist, and later at a magnificent mansion-house and estate at Walton-on-Thames.10 They had no children and Ivy died in 1981. This author was grateful to have had the opportunity of several interviews with her.

Plate 7. Sarah Godward with Alfred, Mary Frederica (‘Nin’) and John William Godward. This is the only known photograph of the artist.

Plate 8. Alfred (1863–1943) or Edmund (1869–1946) Godward, the artist’s brother.

Their next son, John Sidney Godward (Balham, 25 May 1896‒1945), seems to have worked for a foreign firm in the Orient and was captured by the Japanese during World War II. He died of dysentery at Changi Prison Camp in Singapore on 27 August, just twelve days after the war ended. Their one daughter, Margaret Mary, called ‘Marjorie’ Godward (Balham, 27 Jul 1899‒1967) died a spinster. Alfred and Margaret’s last child, Arthur Henry, was called ‘Harry’ Godward (Balham, 29 Dec 1900‒1963). He was typically in the financial world as a bank clerk. Though he married twice, he had no children. His father, Alfred, died in senility in 1943 at Birthrope, Woodcote Parke Road, Epson, Surrey at the age of seventy-nine years. Sometime between February and October of 1864, the John and Sarah Godward family left Battersea for the more metropolitan area of No. 1 Peterborough Terrace in Fulham.11 Peterborough Terrace was renamed Harwood Terrace in 1881‒82 and formed a part of Sarah Godward’s estate at her death.12 Fulham is quite close to Westbridge Road, on the opposite bank of the River Thames. How interesting that Fulham came into the story at such an early stage in J.W. Godward’s life.13

Fulham was west of Chelsea, and from the eighth century it developed from the heart of the Manor of Fulham, not as a single village but a number of settlements which had to wait until the second half of the nineteenth century to be linked together. The communities were: Fulham Town, Parsons Green, Waltham Green, North End and Sandsend. Fulham was the fruit and kitchen garden north of the Thames.14 The area where the Godwards settled retained many of its farms and gardens well into the twentieth century. It was there that Mary Frederica, called ‘Nin’, Godward (1 Feb 1866‒14 Jan 1957) was born.15 She lived to be over ninety-one years old. She was the first of the John and Sarah Godward children to marry, being twenty-three when she married William George Scott on 19 October 1889. They lived in Surrey and had two children (Plate 9). Of all the siblings, she was the closest to her brother John William and might be considered the other ‘black sheep’ of the family. Later she became indispensable to the family as the proverbial ‘Dutiful Daughter’ taking care of her infirm mother. Probably because of an opportunity to ‘move-up’, the growing John Godward family again relocated between March and October of 1866, leasing the

Plate 9. Mary Frederica ‘Nin’ Godward (1866–1957) with her two children, Winifred and W.J. Scott.

Plate 10. Alfred or Edmund Godward, the artist’s brother.

larger accommodation at No. 3 Peterborough Villas in Fulham, not far from No. 1 Peterborough Terrace. Most of the moves seemed to come after the birth of a new child. Probably they just moved to new accommodation to fit the size of their family. The 1871 census directory classifies Peterborough Villas as Sandsend (an area close to the River Thames), while in the 1881 census it was listed under King’s Road.16 A map of Fulham and Chelsea from the period shows Peterborough Villas almost surrounded by fields. A son, Walter Eboral Godward, was born in April of 1866, but died at just four months of age. At Peterborough Villas their third child, Edmund Theodore, called ‘Ted’ Godward (Monday, 23 Nov 1869‒29 Nov 1946) was born (Plate 10).17 He lived to be seventy-seven years old. Edmund married Elizabeth Beatrice Formby, but had no children from this union. He succeeded the financial tradition of his father by becoming London manager for the Australasian Bank. His wife died in 1926 at The Dower House in Cheam, Surrey. He lived to be seventy-seven years old and died at The Grange, Crawley Down, Sussex in 1946. The youngest child, Charles Arthur Godward (Saturday, 29 Jun 1872‒9 Oct 1949), was also born at

No. 3 Peterborough Villas (Plates 11 to 13). He was a sportsman and lived to be seventy-seven years old.18 Charles Arthur married Gertrude Horton Plumtree in 1920 and they lived at Barton on Bouverie Road in Chipstead, Surrey. After his death in 1949 Gertrude moved to Church Lane Avenue, Hooley, then in rustic Coulsdon, Surrey, about sixteen miles from London. Charles Arthur followed his father into the fire and burglary insurance business.19 Their only child was Peter John Godward of Rustington, who in turn had a son and daughter.20 Peter was instrumental in providing information solidifying this publication’s scholarship. The family lived at No. 3 Peterborough Villas in Fulham until at least 1872. This placed John Godward much closer to his work on the Strand. However, according to Kelly’s Street Directory, the family was living at No. 3 Dorset Road in Wimbledon by 1876.21 If the pattern established with the birth of their other children holds true, perhaps that date could be moved back until July of 1872 with the birth of Charles Arthur. Thus the Godwards may have lived at the Dorset address from 1872 to 1882.22 Interestingly, one of the few photographs of his family depicts his brothers with tennis cloths ‒ a legacy of living in Wimbledon? (See Plate 11.)

Plate 11. Charles Arthur Godward (1872–1949), standing, left, Alfred or Edmund Godward right.

Plate 12. Charles Arthur Godward.

John William possibly went to school in the Fulham-Wimbledon area. The Education Act of 1871 changed the schooling system, nationalising most of it. However by the time Godward was ten, the national schools were not fully installed. We know nothing of his youth, but given the ‘loner’ image which he later projected, one can imagine that he was shy and non assertive as a youngster. With the possible exception of his academic grades and certainly his drawing ability, he probably had an undistinguished schoolboy career. Like so many artists he was probably the ‘school artist’ wherever he was. As Godward came from a middle class family he may easily have attended one of the numerous private schools common in that day. Many of these were very small establishments, usually in someone’s house. The wealthier sectors of society would generally be taught by governesses in their own homes, while boys from these families might then go on to boarding schools, such as Eton, Harrow, or Rugby, etc. It is unlikely; however, that John William followed this latter path.23 His home life was probably dominated by his father, who saw to it that all the sons followed his lead into the

Plate 13. Charles Arthur Godward with his wife Gertrude, 1940s.

family profession of insurance, investing and banking. All of the children seem to have been successful in acceptable professions, but none had more pressure to succeed in business and none proved a greater disappointment than the eldest son. Destined by his authoritarian parents to be an insurance clerk, John William inexplicably went his own way. The mother hen, Sarah Eboral, ruled as an intrusive, over-protective matriarch. Everything that happened in the family was subordinated to the wishes of either parent.24 The family stayed under one roof for an inordinately long period of time. In fact the so-called ‘alienated’ John William lived at home until he was twenty-six years old ‒ hardly a rush to escape! The youngest brother, Charles Arthur, lived at home until he was forty-seven! Other factors seem to be at play here. According to Dr. Kent Rich, a psychologist, given John William’s personality and family history, the home was presumably a highly controlled environment.25 It may be that Godward’s penchant for limiting his circle of relationships began during his youth and mirrors his family’s closed ring. Later he became a recluse and further limited his own set of variables.

Colour Plate 165. In Pensive Mood 1919, oil on canvas, 49½ x 29in. (125.4 x 73.7cm). Courtesy Sotheby’s Images.

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Colour Plate 166. A Red, Red Rose 1920, oil on canvas, 49¾ x 29½in. (126.4 x 75cm). Courtesy Frederick C. and Sherry Ross, New Jersey.

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Colour Plate 167. A Souvenir 1920, oil on canvas, 35 x 47in. (89 x 120cm). Courtesy Owen Edgar Ltd, London.

after the honeymoon they moved into John William’s Fulham Road home. They arrived on Cup Final Day, at the exact moment of the match at Stamford Bridge Sports Grounds (Chelsea Football Club). They had to have a police escort to get them through the crowd and to make sure they weren’t attempting to sneak into the stadium!38 Godward’s health problems began to mount during 1920. The size of his yearly oeuvre was restricted by his health and this year saw the creation of only five known paintings. It is probable that a larger number of pictures were painted but only five are accounted for. His best pictures of the year were A Red Red Rose (1920, Colour Plate 166) and A Souvenir (1920, Colour Plate 167) The first opus depicts a brilliant alizarin crimson tunic on a buxom Roman lady who deftly holds a single rose. Typical in his later pictures, the colour becomes more deeply saturated than in his earlier and blonder paintings. The background is an abstract of marble

graining without reference to any architectural content. A greater visual luxuriance and psychological tension seems to proliferate. As in An Offering to Venus (1912), this oil illustrates a beautiful young woman arranging roses in a bowl. Six kinds of marble or granite grace this purposely cluttered but wonderfully effective oil. All of Godward’s experience is poured into the treatment of flesh, coloured stone, drapery and flowers. The marriage of brushwork to his extraordinary palette of colours results in a range of textures. A Souvenir is one of Godward’s most formal and abstract paintings. Accessory detail is held to a minimum while the spatial construction has greater impact. It was sold, certainly through Messrs. Eugene Cremetti, to the Jam Saheb, Maharaja of Nawanagar, for his work seldom sold by the 1920s to English clients. All the paintings of 1920 were fairly large in size. A flurry of fine pictures left his studio at this time. His last tondo painting, An Edition de Luxe (1920, Colour Plate 168) was a masterpiece. It depicts an Italian beauty sitting on an abalone inlaid

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Colour Plate 168. An Edition De Luxe 1920, oil on canvas, circular 39½in. (100cm) diameter. Private collection.

chair wearing a green tunic, crimson stola, crimson and pink ribbons, holding a scroll she is reading. At the Window (1920, Colour Plate 169) demonstrates Godward’s continuing strengths as his vigor was declining. It depicts a Pompeian beauty who patiently waits for some sign, perhaps for the return of her suitor. The loggia has a black tesserae floor, with panels of colorful marbles inlaid into the wall rendered by the artist with the greatest dexterity and virtuosity. The upper walls are painted in Pompeian red and black. This, plus the Isle of Ischia in the distance, reveal we are in southern Italy during the height of Pompeian affluence.

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Increasing health difficulties continued to plague the artist, who only produced two known works in 1921. His return to London also restricted his painting time to these two fairly modest pieces. A small tondo canvas entitled Crispinella (Plate 44) depicts a bust length portrait of a young black haired Roman maiden. The next picture, Megilla (Colour Plate 170), was one of the finest of the artist’s half length profiles. We do not know if they were painted in Italy or England, but they certainly could not encompass the artist’s entire oeuvre for the year. The sculptor Arturo Martini had come to Rome in

Colour Plate 169. At the Window 1920, oil on canvas, 31½ x 16in. (80.3 x 40.3cm). Courtesy Christie’s Images.

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1921, looking for a studio.39 The artists of the advanced school of art, Valori Plastici battaient son plein40, were impressed with his work and invited him to stay in Rome. Together they expended much effort striving to find him a studio, but to no avail. However, when Godward abandoned his studio in May or June of 1921, returning to London, it was immediately seized upon by Martini and his friends – Villa resident Francesco Trombadori, the kindly Roberto Melli and the famous Giorgio de Chirico. It was certainly Trombadori who alerted Martini of the vacant artist’s studio at No. 2 Villa Strohl-Fern.41 ‘Unity makes Force’, was their motto as they commandeered Godward’s studio. The vacant premise was occupied by these squatting artists, whose artwork Godward would have abhorred. ‘The enterprise ended in front of a judge, with the artists accused of violation of a private domicile [trespassing].’42 The usual method was to petition a commission before taking over the studio, but they trespassed first then petitioned second. Martini was eventually ejected from the property after a fist-fight with the landlord, but at what costs to the contents of the studio? They certainly didn’t have any respect for the reclusive Godward, who they little knew, and helped themselves to anything they wanted.

Colour Plate 170. Megilla 1921, oil on canvas, 19¾ x 15¾in. (50.2 x 40cm). Courtesy Hampel Fine Art Auctions.

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Plate 44. Crispinella 1921, watercolour, circular 20in. (50.7cm) diameter. Courtesy Bonhams, London.

Colour Plate 171. Praxilla 1921, oil on canvas, 181⁄8 x 143⁄8in. (46 x 36.5cm). Courtesy Christie’s London.

‘John William Godward was among the brightest stars of the late Graeco-Roman painters, during classicism’s twilight and final extinguishing.’

ISBN: 978-1-85149-903-8

ËxHSLIPBy499038zv;:;:!:!:! £35.00/$50.00