Images in Art and Society
The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, in Coventry, maintains a permanent exhibition on the subject. The oldest painting was commissioned by the County of the City of Coventry in 1586 and produced by Adam van Noort, a refugee Flemish artist. His painting depicts a "voluptuously displayed" Lady Godiva against the background of a "fantastical Italianate Coventry". In addition the Gallery has collected many Victorian interpretations of the subject described by Marina Warner as "an oddly composed Landseer, a swooning Watts and a sumptuous Alfred Woolmer".
Colliers' Lady Godiva (above) was bequeathed by social reformer, Thomas Hancock Nunn. When he died in 1937, the painting was offered to the Corporation of Hampstead. He specified in his will that should his bequest be refused by Hampstead (presumably on grounds of propriety) the painting was then to be offered to Coventry. The painting now hangs in the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum.
Read more about this topic: Lady Godiva
Famous quotes containing the words images, art and/or society:
“The romance and mystery is [sic] gone. Computer-processed images have no delicacy, no craftsmanship, no substance, and no soul. No love.”
—Kim Nibblett (b. c. 1969)
“... [photographs] trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“I have never yet spoken from a public platform about women in industry that someone has not said, “But things are far better than they used to be.” I confess to impatience with persons who are satisfied with a dangerously slow tempo of progress for half of society in an age which requires a much faster tempo than in the days that “used to be.” Let us use what might be instead of what has been as our yardstick!”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)