Idleness

John William Godward's 'Idleness' of 1900 depicts a young woman in classical dress reclining in the comfortable leisure posture that gave the painting its title—the state of doing nothing, free from obligation and care, which Godward consistently presented as the defining condition of his imagined classical world. Godward was the last practitioner of the Victorian Neo-Classical figure painting tradition pioneered by Alma-Tadema, continuing to produce these meticulously painted marble-and-figure compositions into the early twentieth century despite their increasing unfashionability in the era of Fauvism and Cubism.

The figure's classical drapery is rendered with Godward's characteristic meticulousness, the fabric's translucent and opaque passages carefully distinguished and the folds described with almost sculptural precision. The marble surface on which she reclines is treated with equal care, its cool white veining contrasting with the warmer tones of the figure.