PALM DESERT, CA.- These paintings are excellent examples of the artist's ouevre - ancient Roman or Greek women, and sometimes men, engage in leisurely activities in beautiful Mediterranean settings. Every detail is rendered realistically and carefully, from the straps of the figures' sandals to the marble benches upon which they sit.

John William Godward regularly exhibited his artwork at the Royal Academy in London during his lifetime and his artwork is currently held in private and public collections, including that of Andrew Lloyd Weber and the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

In The Seamstress, a Roman woman sits within a marble exedra overlooking the blue Mediterranean sea, while tending to her needlework. The umbrella pines in the background capture the essence of Italy.

By the Blue Ionian Sea depicts a Roman woman seated upon a lion skin atop a marble bench. Umbrella pines and the Mediterranean sea frame this composition. According to earlier sketches, Godward originally intended this painting to be a tondo.

A young woman sits within a marble terrace playing knucklebones, an ancient game similar to jacks, in this archetypal composition titled Ancient Pastimes. Behind the woman is an archaistic marble herm statue of a woman, statues that at one time were used as boundary markers, but became decoration in formal Roman gardens. Behind, a flowering red almond tree and the Mediterranean provide a restful backdrop to this leisurely composition.

The final painting of this group is a unique image, in that it is one of Godward’s very few oil paintings that depict a male and female couple. According to Vern Grosvenor Swanson, author of the John William Godward catalog raisonne, the setting of this painting is the Isle of Capri with Ischia in the distance. The painting has been identified with Godward’s Youth and Time because behind the young lovers is a horologium or sundial.