The Signal 1918

John William Godward made this painting, The Signal, using oil on canvas. It’s hard to say exactly when, but Godward was working in the late 19th and early 20th century. Godward had a real knack for detail. You can see the brushstrokes are smoothed out to almost nothing, especially in the woman's pink dress. It's like he's trying to make paint look like fabric! The texture of the marble is pretty convincing, too. Look at how the light catches the edges of the stone bench. What really grabs me is the feather fan she’s waving. It’s a burst of brown against all that cool blue of the sky and sea. It's the "signal" of the painting's title, but the artist doesn't say what the signal is for... There is a similar mood to some paintings by Lawrence Alma-Tadema, also obsessed with classical antiquity, but Godward’s version feels a bit more intimate, somehow, and a bit more mysterious.