John Maler Collier's Lady Godiva, painted around 1898 by the late pre-Raphaelite master, is an imagined reproduction of the medieval myth of Lady Godiva. Capturing the moment when the 11th- century aristocrat reportedly rode naked atop a horse through the streets of the English city of Coventry in protest of the unfair taxes levied upon the tenants of her husband's estates, Collier celebrates a legendary hero and supporter of the ever-exploited individuals of the English underclass. Emerging at the tender age of twenty as a prodigious painter of fashionable subjects, Collier was one of the most celebrated popular painters of the nineteenth century. Greatly influeced by John Everett Millais, Collier made a successful career painting genre works and supplying figurative reproductions of theatrical figures. After his initial fame waned he restored his reputation by studying and depicting the hardships and inequalities of contemporary life. Lady Godiva, almost situated in a legendary medieval England, firmly references the Victoria treatment of the poor. Although rather conservative in his technique and slightly too restrained in his approach, Collier's sensual and urgent use of colour have the ability to suggest deeply evocative moods. Writing extensively on the art of painting, Collier was deeply integrated in his craft. Lady Godiva, a curiously pensive reproduction of the myth and a profoundly thoughtful work, is painted from the point of view of a passerby, perhaps the original 'Peeping Tom' who, upon staring at the naked noblewoman, was struck blind. Like his Victorian colleagues, the pre-Raphaelite, the Symbolists, and other movements that focused on gazing at the female form, Collier used feminine beauty as both the target and the weapon of his dramas. Displaying a unique approach to the staging of his images, Collier's work would prefigure the mise-en-scene of silent cinema.