Lady Godiva

George Frederic Watts's 'Lady Godiva' (1885) is a subject with deep English historical and legendary resonance — the Countess Godiva's legendary ride through Coventry to secure relief from oppressive taxation for the town's people was one of the most celebrated episodes of English medieval history/legend, celebrated in Tennyson's poem and in numerous Victorian paintings. Watts's engagement with the subject at the height of his career brought his characteristic combination of classical technique and symbolic depth to this quintessentially English legendary subject.

Watts renders Godiva with his characteristic combination of idealized figure treatment and atmospheric subtlety — the nude woman on horseback, her long hair providing the modest concealment of the legend, depicted with the classical purity of form that distinguished his best allegorical figure work. His handling of the atmospheric quality around the figure and the quality of the light on the figure creates the dreamlike, symbolic atmosphere appropriate to the legendary subject. The horse's form and its relationship to the nude rider create the composition's primary formal challenge.