Reverie

Reverie, painted in 1904 and now at the J. Paul Getty Museum, depicts a young woman absorbed in private thought, her gaze turned inward and away from the viewer in the pose of absorption that was Godward's most characteristic compositional device. The Getty's collection of late Victorian and Edwardian painting makes it one of the few major American museums to give Godward's work the institutional attention it was denied during the modernist decades when his style was dismissed as regressive. The painting's combination of archaeological exactitude and psychological interiority represents Godward's distinctive contribution to the tradition of Neo-Classical figure painting.

The figure's inward gaze and slightly inclined head create the impression of private contemplation that the title promises, Godward rendering psychological states through posture and expression rather than through narrative action. The classical setting—marble surface, draped cloth—is handled with his customary technical precision, the cool stone contrasting with the warm flesh of the figure.