The Flowers of Venus

Though little is known about the English painter John William Godward, his "Flower of Venus" artwork can never be forgotten. He was born in 1861 and spent all his life doing art.

He was greatly inspired by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema during his art life. However, his style and techniques became outdated and lost favour due to arrival of talented painters like Picasso. He later committed suicide aged 61 years leaving a note that said the world was not big enough for him and Picasso. Godward had spent considerable amount of time studying and imitating the work and drawings of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. He had realistic and elaborate rendering of details to marble and flowers. These details enabled him to easily plan the painting of the Flower of Venus. Due to regular exhibitions that he performed at the Royal Academy in London, he had a vivid idea of how the Flower of the Venus would look like.

Godward was a great painter and master of the Neoclassic Style. He knew how to use marble to construct stationary landscape features. Therefore, the style of Neoclassism is perfectly used on the Flowers of the Venus. Godward was an architecture who studied historical sites and artefacts belonging to his mentor, Sir Lawrence, which enabled his painting style to stand out from all other painters. Godward was widely known to use a technique of women in Classic dress. In this painting, he uses this technique to draw the woman in a classic dress against beautiful landscape features of a flower garden. Also, Godward would draw women semi-nude or completely nude in some of art pieces as a common technique. The most notable piece work was In the Tepidarium, 1913.

Godward displays his skills in painting the image using Oil as the medium and Canvas as the material. During his era, oil and canvas were the most used media of painting. Most evident tags seen from this image are female-portraits and flower-and-plants. Most of Godward's work was inspired by Sir Lawrence and partly Frederic Leighton. His work was more stylistically allied to their works displaying use of Classical architecture. Emerging painters were not interested in copying his work since his style of painting had become outdated. The Flower of Venus is privately owned up to date.