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Sotheby's Catalogue entry on Godward's "Idleness"

When evaluating the 1907 painting entitled "Idleness" by William Godward the Sotheby's online catalogue enthuses that the work is "technically superb, with gorgeous color and a sensual suggestion of carefree harmony and hedonistic pleasures." But the sexual and fulsome nature of this prose seems to be rather inappropriate, given the heavily draped figure of the matronly young Victorian girl of the actual illustration. The girl looks somnolent rather than carefree, and over decorated with drapery rather than harmonious with nature. The reader suspects he or she is being sold a work of dubious aesthetic value for the contemporary eye, financial possibilities aside.

The catalogue seems to further belie any attempt at objectivity when it goes on to day that "Idleness" exemplifies "the very best of Godward, an artist who over the last few years has become one of the most highly sought after Victorian artists." If everyone else is buying the firsthand works of Godward, so should you, as a good investment, this phrase decorously implies. From a perspective of taste, he love of the artist for his models, and for feminine beauty and color is the primary means by which the catalogue entices the onlooker to buy the original work, as the catalogue also states that "John William Godward devoted his entire career to the depiction of feminine beauty, painting favorite models again and again." Buy this work of Godward, suggests the catalogue, and buy a piece of this Victorian love of feminine beauty, an age now past.

Again and again, the financial trendy-ness of Godward as an investment and his larger career as a Victorian artist of note comes to the forefront of the catalogue text, rather any enthusiasm about the actual work of "Idleness." This may be partly due to the fact that the artist has produced other, superior words of art to "Idleness." It may also be that luxurious, feminine indolence is no longer an idealized value of the 21st century, as it was when the author created the image, and thus the artist himself becomes the focus of the 'sell.' The catalogue also stresses the value of the artist's works as a whole, and the resurgence of interest in the faux classical images of the late Victorian period to not simply enhance the perceived aesthetic value of the work but also the perceived financial investment the purchaser is making.

In fact, were it not for the provenance of the object in a Sotheby's catalogue, the image of the young woman might strike the gazer as rather tacky. It is a copy of popular images of what life in ancient Greece and Rome for women was really like, not a rendition of an actual woman with a unique facial expression. The catalogue terms "Idleness" a "rediscovery, a painting by one of the finest late Nineteenth Century Classicists, epitomizing the vogue for ladies in togas which held Middle-Class London under its enduring spell well into the Twentieth Century.