Lady Godiva

Coventry

John Collier's Godiva of 1898, the lady of the legend riding naked through an invented stone Coventry. The painting hangs at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, which titles it simply Godiva; Lady Godiva is the alias the wider world uses.

Collier painted her as a young, shy, sensitive woman, seated astride where most Godivas ride side saddle, and Art UK's catalogue note observes that the real Coventry of her day was a wooden, single storey village, nothing like the Romanesque stone the picture gives her. The work reached Coventry in 1937, bequeathed by the social reformer Thomas Hancock Nunn, offered first to Hampstead and, on refusal, to Coventry under the terms of his will.

John Collier

John Collier, 1850 to 1934, was an English painter, born and died in London. Art UK's note on this picture traces the wave of Victorian Godiva paintings to Tennyson's famous 1842 poem of the legend, and Collier's stone architecture to the medieval sculpture collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Herbert Art Gallery & Museum · Art UK

Artist John Collier, 1898. Seen via @art_for_breakfast.

The picture comes from this post on Instagram.

Researched August 2026. I credit each piece as carefully as I can; if you know more about this one, message me on Instagram.