DOI Heft:
No. 301 (April 1918)
DOI Artikel:Wedmore, Frederick: Albert Goodwin, R.W.S.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21356#0093
Albert Goodwin, R.IV.S.
questions about painting : that all great efforts
are errors, and that we only use our power fully
by only doing that which we know we can do
well and enjoy doing better and better every
day. I have always felt deep regret at your
taking to oil and to large canvases."
That has something, but not quite all, to
justify it; but Mr. Ruskin's further dictum,
unless addressed to special cases only, is regret-
tably narrowing :
" The virtue of Oil, as I understand, is perfect
delineation of solid form in deep local colour.
It seems to me not only adverse to, but even
the negation of positively beautiful landscape
effect."
And then he adds—speaking of his own past—
" Very thankful should I be for more of those
Danielli days again "—he means he wishes he
could be in Venice and Goodwin there beside
him—" but I can't sketch myself and write too ;
nor now do my eyes serve me as of old. But
happiness," he sadly ends, " happiness is at Ilfra-
combe for you, not here ; and I, wishing you to
be happy, am ever your affectionate J. R."
By the time this letter was written, Goodwin
appeared to have a place of some distinction
already marked out for him ; for it was in 1872,
when he was at the most twenty-eight, that
acceptance had been found for his work at the
Old Water-Colour Society. He tells me, in a
letter, that though he received encouragement,
there were also those who gave him such advice
as he could not' appreciate. There were those
who told him that " he must never paint a
rainbow," and those who told him that he
" must never paint a sunset " ; and Mr. Good-
win has not eschewed rainbows—that I know
of—and has certainly had in sunsets some of
his finest and most individual successes. The
least wise of his advisers, I think, were for
narrowing him to the repetition of his most
promptly recognized attainments. Had he
listened there might have been no Paris at Rest.
The advice would have fitted those who had a
narrow talent, for all endowment—a trick of
the hand, by which alone to be identified and
esteemed.
But Mr. Goodwin was only like most original
and serious artists in seeing a wide world—a
wider one than his advisers conceived—quite
'PORTSMOUTH'
WATER-COLOUR BY ALBERT GOODWIN, R.W.S.
87
questions about painting : that all great efforts
are errors, and that we only use our power fully
by only doing that which we know we can do
well and enjoy doing better and better every
day. I have always felt deep regret at your
taking to oil and to large canvases."
That has something, but not quite all, to
justify it; but Mr. Ruskin's further dictum,
unless addressed to special cases only, is regret-
tably narrowing :
" The virtue of Oil, as I understand, is perfect
delineation of solid form in deep local colour.
It seems to me not only adverse to, but even
the negation of positively beautiful landscape
effect."
And then he adds—speaking of his own past—
" Very thankful should I be for more of those
Danielli days again "—he means he wishes he
could be in Venice and Goodwin there beside
him—" but I can't sketch myself and write too ;
nor now do my eyes serve me as of old. But
happiness," he sadly ends, " happiness is at Ilfra-
combe for you, not here ; and I, wishing you to
be happy, am ever your affectionate J. R."
By the time this letter was written, Goodwin
appeared to have a place of some distinction
already marked out for him ; for it was in 1872,
when he was at the most twenty-eight, that
acceptance had been found for his work at the
Old Water-Colour Society. He tells me, in a
letter, that though he received encouragement,
there were also those who gave him such advice
as he could not' appreciate. There were those
who told him that " he must never paint a
rainbow," and those who told him that he
" must never paint a sunset " ; and Mr. Good-
win has not eschewed rainbows—that I know
of—and has certainly had in sunsets some of
his finest and most individual successes. The
least wise of his advisers, I think, were for
narrowing him to the repetition of his most
promptly recognized attainments. Had he
listened there might have been no Paris at Rest.
The advice would have fitted those who had a
narrow talent, for all endowment—a trick of
the hand, by which alone to be identified and
esteemed.
But Mr. Goodwin was only like most original
and serious artists in seeing a wide world—a
wider one than his advisers conceived—quite
'PORTSMOUTH'
WATER-COLOUR BY ALBERT GOODWIN, R.W.S.
87