Waiting for an answer

Waiting for an Answer, dated to 1889, is one of the earliest works in Godward's mature classical style and shows him already committed to the vocabulary of solitary female figure in a classically furnished setting that he would develop for the next three decades. The 'waiting' motif — which Godward used repeatedly across his career, including in Waiting for the Procession (1890) — gave him access to a state of suspended stillness that suited his preference for close observation over dynamic narrative. In 1889 Godward was in his late twenties and had recently moved from commercial art work toward fine art practice, and works of this year show him deploying the aesthetic he had absorbed from Alma-Tadema with growing confidence. The subject's mild narrative implication — a letter has been sent, a response is expected — was sufficient to give the picture a human dimension without requiring Godward to depict action.

As a very early mature work, Waiting for an Answer shows Godward's marble and drapery rendering still developing toward the refinement of his 1895-1905 peak. Stone surfaces are competently but less fluidly handled than in later works, and the figure's flesh modelling carries slight marks of over-working that his mature canvases would eliminate through greater confidence and fewer corrective passages.