art for hard times

With museums and galleries now firmly closed and off limits, I have been obsessing about art on twitter a bit, following a few artbots and checking their back catalogues. One of the artists I discovered this way is the British neoclassicist John Godward (1861-1922), who painted lots of very melancholy looking women with mediterranean backdrops. I'm a bit of a sucker for melancholic looking people at the best of times, but now these paintings seem to fit the general mood as well, and I also found lots of people taking inspiration from Godward's paintings and either using them for "mood" posts or recreating their looks.

So here's a little gallery of my favourites, enjoy:




(I haven't made notes of the complete titles, but trying to reconstruct titles from my filenames, we have: 1890 reverie; 1899 letter; 1902 When the heart is young; 1906 tambourine girl; 1906 Violets, sweet violets; 1909 Summer idleness: day dreams; 1918 Lycinna)

Blame it all on this artbot on twitter.

And artrenewal.org has a page with more than 200 of his works.

This website claims it has the complete works (210 of them) but it also has some annoying pop-up ads.

His models included: Ethel Warwick (1882-1951); the sisters Lilly, Harriet and Rose Pettigrew;

PS other artists whose work acquires a new meaning these days include Edward Hopper, whose lonely people look like they may have been quarantined too.