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Lot Essay
At the Gate of the Temple is a testament to the artist's skill at rendering texture, surface, harmonies of color and a feminine ideal. Godward presents his favored subject, a pink-cheeked, dark haired-beauty in diaphanous robes standing upright and proud as she gazes out at the viewer. Contrasting with the cold smoothness of the formidable door and hard marble floor, the woman's skin and drapery appear warm, soft and palpable.
Mythology was a constant source of inspiration for Godward and here he depicts this young maiden as a bacchante, a priestess and follower of Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery. Standing guard at the temple door holding a thyrsus stick with a pine-cone topknot, this bacchante is simultaneously authoritative and imposing as well as seductive and ethereal. Throughout his life, Godward remained dedicated to his own style of Neoclassicism that pictured sensuous beauties, like this bacchante, in highly polished mythical settings.
Vern Swanson write enthusiastically about the present work 'Certainly his most successful paintings of 1898 was At the Gate of the Temple. This painting bears certain compositional similarities with the The Priestess of 1894. The bacchante was undoubtedly Lily Pettigrew, a noted model who often posed for Godward' (op.cit. p.196).
Mythology was a constant source of inspiration for Godward and here he depicts this young maiden as a bacchante, a priestess and follower of Bacchus, the god of wine and debauchery. Standing guard at the temple door holding a thyrsus stick with a pine-cone topknot, this bacchante is simultaneously authoritative and imposing as well as seductive and ethereal. Throughout his life, Godward remained dedicated to his own style of Neoclassicism that pictured sensuous beauties, like this bacchante, in highly polished mythical settings.
Vern Swanson write enthusiastically about the present work 'Certainly his most successful paintings of 1898 was At the Gate of the Temple. This painting bears certain compositional similarities with the The Priestess of 1894. The bacchante was undoubtedly Lily Pettigrew, a noted model who often posed for Godward' (op.cit. p.196).