Deborah Lipp

A long time ago, my friend Cindy sent me a beautiful card. I loved it so much I displayed it in the kitchen, where it has proceeded to get splashed and misshapen from being too close to the sink. At one point I did some ‘net searching, hoping to find a nice print of the image, but came up empty.

Since I recently repainted, I have taken down—and must rehang—all my posters, and while talking about my artwork, this particular print came up in conversation. It reminded me, I said, of Flaming June by Frederic Leighton.

So this morning I decided to try again. And what I found was that I had searched for the wrong name before. (I searched for the name of the card company. d’Oh!) What I was looking for was Dolce Far Niente, by John William Godward.

So I found it! And having found Godward, I found I was quite taken with a lot of his work. I looked at a lot, and some of it reminded me of something.

Maybe fifteen years ago (maybe more), the back cover of Gnosis Magazine had this painting that I loved so much I pulled it off and had it framed. It was the Oracle of Delphi, but in a style that struck me as incongruous, and yet compelling. The Godward paintings reminded me of that, so I did more searching, and you guessed it, it’s a Godward.

This just blows my mind. Here is a painter that I never heard of, and that no one I know has ever mentioned, although he is at least as ripe with Pagan overtones as Waterhouse or Rosetti (another favorite of mine), and yet, I had managed to come across, and save, two different Godward paintings, without even realizing they were by the same artist!

And hey? Here’s the first line of the “Works” section in Wikipedia:

Godward was a Victorian Neo-classicist, and therefore a follower in theory of Frederic Leighton.

You remember Leighton, right? He started this whole train of thought by painting Flaming June.

So all of this teaches me something about the nature of taste, about being drawn to certain things without knowing why, but perhaps that’s a subject for another post.

Dolce Far Niente below the fold.