Object Description
ALBERT GOODWIN, RWS
(1845-1932)
Naples
Signed with monogram l.r. and inscribed with title l.l.
Oil on board
Framed
19 by 26 cm., 7 ½ by 10 ¼ in.
(frame size 40 by 48 cm., 15 ¾ by 19 in.)
Provenance:
Tom Coates, NEAC, RWS and Mary Jackson, NEAC, RWS.
Albert Goodwin was born in Maidstone. On leaving school he apprenticed to a local draper, but six months later he gave up his apprenticeship to paint. Already under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelites, in the late 1850s he received tuition from Arthur Hughes who also lived in Maidstone and he exhibited his first work at the Royal Academy in 1860 when aged only 15. At this time he became a pupil of Ford Madox Brown and came under the influence of the inner circle of the Pre-Raphaelites and in particular their eminent supporter and critic, John Ruskin.
Goodwin seems to have met Ruskin in about 1870 and they made several sketching tours in Britain over the next years. In 1872 Ruskin asked Goodwin to accompany him on a three-month tour of Italy and the trip proved to be a turning point in his artistic career. Through Ruskin’s encouragement the influence of Turner became dominant in Goodwin’s work. He put into practice the programme that Ruskin, inspired by Turner, enunciated in Modern Painters and through careful and studied drawings and the painstaking study of nature he created poetic and atmospheric landscapes.
Goodwin was a regular exhibitor at the Royal Watercolour Society from 1871 until his death and held a number of one-man shows in London at the Fine Art Society and elsewhere.