English: (see Sotheby's) The present work is a study for John William Godward's monumental Campaspe (sold Sotheby's, London, December 14, 2006, lot 127). Much like the final painting, the oil study depicts not a pale, tragic and fragile ingénue as may have been painted in the mid- nineteenth century, but a more red-blooded, confident woman of the end of the century: commanding, seductive and languorous. She is bedecked with violets and carries a golden wand which she strokes suggestively with her forefinger whilst she gazes out alluringly at her admirers. Her full lips, blushed cheeks and somnolent eyes add to the erotic charge, fully evident in even the diminutive painting presented here. Leaning against her own diaphanous robes and the ribbons which had bound them around her now exposed form, her confrontational pose reminds the viewer they are witness to the undressing of a real woman rather than the perpetual nudity of nymphs and goddesses.