DOI issue:
No. 204 (March, 1910)
DOI article:Baldry, Alfred Lys: The art of Mr. Albert Goodwin, R. W. S.
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20969#0113
Albert Goodwin, R.JV.S.
knows it would not be wise for him to stray.
Within these boundaries there is ample room for
the full growth of all that is best in his art; they
do not cramp him, they do not shut him off from
anything that he needs for the proper evolution of
his artistic intention; all that they do is to guard
him from that purposeless wandering to and fro
which so many artists mistake for freedom and
which leads them often into utter waste of their
powers.
Mr. Goodwin’s art, however, restrained as it is in
manner and controlled as it is by wholesome and
well-balanced sentiment, is markedly free from
mere conventionality. He is a painter with an
unusual breadth of view and with an exceptional
willingness to handle any sort of material that
nature may offer him if it will afford him sufficient
chances of gratifying his desire for a particular
kind of achievement. That he prefers one class
of subject to another, or that he wishes to speci-
alise in any one aspect of nature, no one who
knows his work would ever feel inclined to suggest;
he is, on the contrary, extraordinarily catholic in
his selection and surprisingly impartial in his judg-
ment of pictorial motives. But the material must be
capable of receiving fully the stamp of his person-
ality and of conveying a clear impression of some
one of nature’s moods; it must have adaptability
and be susceptible of a considerable degree of
imaginative treatment.
Indeed, in all Mr. Goodwin’s paintings the sub-
ject, as it is popularly understood, is of compara-
tive unimportance; it is the way in which he deals
with it that counts. His real motive may be an
effect of quiet sunlight or of misty half-veiled
illumination, it may be a grey dawn or a stormy
sunset, or again it may be the working out of a
decorative pattern of lines and masses which has
been suggested to him by something he has seen ;
it is always something beyond the mere arranging
of plain facts that he is striving after—some touch
of poetry, romance, or drama, some quality of
decoration or some manifestation of his aesthetic
perception of nature’s meaning. The subject is
only a framework which he fills up and overlays;
it is the premise upon which he builds the argu-
ment that leads him to his artistic conclusion.
The way in which he uses a subject is particu-
larly well shown in the three examples of his work
which are reproduced here in colour—and it is
“THE TOWER OF LONDON” (WATER-COLOUR)
{By permission of the Fine Art Society)
BY ALBERT GOODWIN, R. W.S.
QO
knows it would not be wise for him to stray.
Within these boundaries there is ample room for
the full growth of all that is best in his art; they
do not cramp him, they do not shut him off from
anything that he needs for the proper evolution of
his artistic intention; all that they do is to guard
him from that purposeless wandering to and fro
which so many artists mistake for freedom and
which leads them often into utter waste of their
powers.
Mr. Goodwin’s art, however, restrained as it is in
manner and controlled as it is by wholesome and
well-balanced sentiment, is markedly free from
mere conventionality. He is a painter with an
unusual breadth of view and with an exceptional
willingness to handle any sort of material that
nature may offer him if it will afford him sufficient
chances of gratifying his desire for a particular
kind of achievement. That he prefers one class
of subject to another, or that he wishes to speci-
alise in any one aspect of nature, no one who
knows his work would ever feel inclined to suggest;
he is, on the contrary, extraordinarily catholic in
his selection and surprisingly impartial in his judg-
ment of pictorial motives. But the material must be
capable of receiving fully the stamp of his person-
ality and of conveying a clear impression of some
one of nature’s moods; it must have adaptability
and be susceptible of a considerable degree of
imaginative treatment.
Indeed, in all Mr. Goodwin’s paintings the sub-
ject, as it is popularly understood, is of compara-
tive unimportance; it is the way in which he deals
with it that counts. His real motive may be an
effect of quiet sunlight or of misty half-veiled
illumination, it may be a grey dawn or a stormy
sunset, or again it may be the working out of a
decorative pattern of lines and masses which has
been suggested to him by something he has seen ;
it is always something beyond the mere arranging
of plain facts that he is striving after—some touch
of poetry, romance, or drama, some quality of
decoration or some manifestation of his aesthetic
perception of nature’s meaning. The subject is
only a framework which he fills up and overlays;
it is the premise upon which he builds the argu-
ment that leads him to his artistic conclusion.
The way in which he uses a subject is particu-
larly well shown in the three examples of his work
which are reproduced here in colour—and it is
“THE TOWER OF LONDON” (WATER-COLOUR)
{By permission of the Fine Art Society)
BY ALBERT GOODWIN, R. W.S.
QO