Walter Goodall (British, 1830-1889)

Loving Home
Watercolour on paper, 32,5 by 49,7 cm. Signed bottom left and dated “1865”. Decorative gilt stucco frame.


Goodall, Walter (1830–1889), watercolour painter, was born on 6 November 1830, probably in London, the youngest son and eighth child in thefamilyof six sons and four daughters of Edward Goodall(1795–1870), the engraver of J. M. W. Turner's paintings, and hiswife, Eliza Ann Le Petit, granddaughter of a Huguenot refugee; he was baptized on 2 January 1831 at St Pancras Old Church, Pancras Road, London.FrederickGoodall (1822–1904), theorientalist painter, was his brother. Hestudied at the Government School of Design in Somerset House, London, and was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools in 1847 on the recommendation of Clarkson Stanfield. For a time he worked at the Artists' Society in Clipstone Street (later the Langham Sketching Society) and in 1852 he exhibited three drawings at the Royal Academy. In 1853 he became an associate and in 1862 a member of the Old Watercolour Society, exhibiting 156 works there. He also exhibited at the Royal Manchester Institution, and his Lottery Ticket appeared at the Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition in 1876. Goodall painted only in watercolour, producing mainly idealized scenes of rural life such as The Daydream, The Cradle Song, Waiting for the Ferry-Boat, and The Tired Lace- Maker; a number of these were lithographed in a series called ‘Walter Goodall's Rustic Sketches’ (1855–7). He also made many drawings frompictures in the Vernon Gallery, London, for engravings published in the Art Journal. During a trip to Italy in 1868–9 he did a number of paintings of Venice. For a jubilee gift to Queen Victoria in 1887 he painted Children with a Pet Rabbit. In 1875 Goodall suffered a stroke, and became an invalid. He last exhibited in 1884, and during the last few years of his life was unable to paint. He died on 14 May 1889 in Clapham, near Bedford, leaving a wife and three children; he was buried in Highgate cemetery, Middlesex.

L. H. Cust, rev. Anne Pimlott Baker

Sources N. G. Slarke, Frederick Goodall, R.A. (1981) · Mallalieu, Watercolour artists · D. Millar, The Victorian watercolours and drawings in the collection of her majesty the queen, 2 vols. (1995) · Graves, RA exhibitors · Boase, Mod. Eng. biog. · IGI · Manchester Guardian (28 May 1889)

Quelle: Oxford University Press 2004–14

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