A Fair Reflection

A Fair Reflection, painted in 1915, belongs to Godward's final decade—years when the classical ideal he had devoted his life to was under assault from Fauvism, Cubism, and the catastrophe of the Great War. The subject of a woman gazing at her reflection belongs to a long tradition: Venus at her mirror, the vanitas theme, the self-absorbed beauty. For Godward the mirror offered a structural problem: the reflection allows him to show the figure from two angles while introducing the metaphysical complication that what we see is the image of an image. His treatment is characteristically serene rather than philosophical—the woman regards herself without vanity or anxiety, simply absorbed in her own world. The marble-framed mirror he typically employs continues his architectural vocabulary while introducing the optical complexity of reflection.

Oil on canvas with the high finish of Godward's late period. The reflection requires him to paint a second version of the face, slightly shifted and softened in the polished bronze surface. Bronze reflects more warmly and less precisely than glass—Godward accounts for this material difference.