Alfred Joseph Woolmer was a painter whose subject matter covered the literary and historical genre. He was exceptionally prolific and, by age sixty, the number of works he had exhibited had reached 355 at the Society of British Artists, 45 at the British Institution

British Institution

The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...

, and 12 at the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

.

Woolmer started contributing to exhibitions in 1828. In 1848 he was elected to the Society of British Artists and in the following decade would exhibit between ten and sixteen pictures each year with the society.

His paintings, often mildly erotic, portray the concept of "ut pictura poesis

Ut pictura poesis

Ut pictura poesis is Latin, literally "As is painting so is poetry." The statement occurs most famously in Horace's Ars Poetica, near the end, immediately after the "other" most famous quotation from Horace's treatise on poetics, "bonus dormitat Homerus", or "even Homer nods" :Horace meant that...

". Marina Warner described his Lady Godiva

Lady Godiva

Godiva , often referred to as Lady Godiva , was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through the streets of Coventry in order to gain a remission of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants...

, displayed at the Herbert gallery in Coventry

Coventry

Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the county of West Midlands in England. Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 11th largest in the United Kingdom. It is also the second largest city in the English Midlands, after Birmingham, with a population of 300,848, although...

, as "sumptuous".