Preparing For The Bath (1901) | John William Godward | Painting Art Print | Wall Frame

John William Godward’s large-scale and sensual painting, Preparing for the Bath, was painted only a year after Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s celebrated Thermae Antoninianae (fig. 1, 1899, Collection of Lord Lloyd Webber), depicting the Roman baths of the Emperor Caracalla. The subject of the bathhouse held an obvious attraction for Alma-Tadema, who used them as the setting for some of his most carnal paintings, including In the Tepidarium (1881, Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight), The Frigidarium (1890, Private Collection) and A Favourite Custom (1909, Tate Britain, London). Similarly, Godward found such settings irresistible, as they allowed him to indulge his passion for Greco-Roman architecture and decoration, as well as erotically-charged depictions of the female figure.

The present work depicts a scene similar to Venus Binding her Hair (1897, Private Collection) in which a disrobed model in profile is seen wrapping a ribbon around her head. A sketch for Preparing for the Bath suggests that Godward had initially intended to depict this model in the nude, but he later added the diaphanous gown which is tied and draped, caressing her body. As Vern Swanson describes: “

One of Godward’s most impressive oils… She pays no mind to anything but her task of primping for the fast approaching lover’s tryst. We see in the drapery that Godward has fully painted the nude form of the woman, then sensitively added what he was best at, the subliminal bluish coa vestis tunic” . Godward also highlights his appreciation and knowledge of Antique architecture. The excavation of Pompeii in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries captivated the popular imagination, and Godward has emblazoned his model against a red ground that would be typical of the walls in a Pompeiian villa. The arched recesses used as shelves for the bather’s clothes and possessions are divided by telamones sculpted in porphyry into the figures of Atlas supporting the universe on his shoulders, referencing those in the tepidarium at the thermae in Pompeii.