I also like the compositions of the Englishman John William Godward.
This first one is interesting because of the lighting. The face has taken a back seat to the shoulder in the order of things. Normally you would think that maybe he just got bored with painting the same old lighting and thought he'd try something different, but I don't think he was the type to get bored by painting the same thing over and over again. He did so many paintings that were basically the same thing with maybe a ten percent tweak. Even the same model shows up time and again. I couldn't do that, I would get bored. If you take each individually I think they are all very good, but as a collection of work there sure is a lot of sameness there.
These to me are particularly lush. It's possible that the third one has been cropped, It's hard to know for sure, but there are indications. It's not really all that instructive if it is.
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Mike McCarty
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