Walter Goodman - Prolific Period

Prolific Period

The February, 1874 issue of Cassell's Magazine included two articles by Goodman titled "Saved From a Wreck" and "Cuba Without a Master." In April of that year he wrote another article for the same magazine called "A Holiday in Cuba", which he illustrated with a pretty Cuban girl looking through a barred window. That winter also saw the exhibition of oil paintings titled Young Castile and Voices of the Sea at London's Dudley and French Galleries, respectively. In 1876 he exhibited a drawing, The Language of the Face at The Black and White Exhibition at The Dudley Gallery and Morning Work at the London Exhibition of Fine Arts. The latter work was probably a trompe l'oeil painting, as it is described in a publication of the day as a housemaid is cleaning a window, which the spectator is meant to be looking through. The Mail describes it as a pretty housemaid cleaning a window, and seen through the plate glass, a novel idea cleverly worked out. The painting was sold during the exhibition.

In 1877 two pages of drawings of Russian peasantry by Goodman appeared in the Illustrated London News, as well as an illustration for a Wilkie Collins story, "A Bit for Bob" in the magazine's Christmas Number, entitled "A Little Baggage."

Around this time, Goodman moved to Bradford, Yorkshire and lived with his sister, Alice for several years. Goodman contributed the same drawing to two books in 1879 — God is taking care of me to the Ellen Haile children's book Three Brown Boys and other Happy Children (the other main contributing artist was the renowned children's book illustrator Kate Greenaway) and Floy's first flight to The One Syllable Book. The same drawing appeared again, in 1885, as Obedient Bessie in a children's book called Little Ramblers and Other Stories. In 1877 he exhibited A Factory Girl depicting a northern England factory girl returning home from work, at The Dudley Gallery.

That same year Goodman scored two coups involving the new Chinese diplomatic missions to Europe. Liu Hsi-Hung, Chinese minister to the Court of Berlin, commissioned him to copy the National Gallery's Madonna in Prayer by Sassoferrato, reputedly the first commission given by a Chinese to an English artist. The painting was subsequently dispatched to Germany. He also painted His Excellency Kuo Ta-Jen (Kuo Sung-Tao), Chinese Minister to the Court of St. James's (China's first such ambassador), initially exhibited in 1878 at the Royal Academy and later at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool.

The same year Goodman sent another full-length portrait of a A Chinese Lady of Rank (the sitter was Kuo Tai-Tai — the wife of Kuo-Ta-Jen) to the Royal Academy, after first previewing a preliminary study for Queen Victoria in March 1879 at Windsor Castle. Kuo Tai-Tai also featured in a group portrait by Goodman, together with her young child and child's nurse. This painting was later taken back to China by the ambassador. Major General William Yorke-Moore sat for Goodman in 1879 and this portrait is now in a private collection at The Keep Military Museum, Dorchester, Dorset, England.

Goodman's trip to Windsor might have led to The Queen's son, Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, sitting for Goodman (The Prince never sat for another artist). His portrait was submitted to the Royal Academy in 1881. A court circular from Marlborough House dated July 28, 1884 notes that Goodman submitted the portrait of The Duke of Albany to the Prince and Princess of Wales, from where it was currently displayed in a place of honour surrounded by flowers (The Prince had died earlier that year) at the exhibition of the City of London Society of Artists at the old law courts of The Guildhall. The painting was purchased around 1884 by The National Hospital in Queen Square, London. The hospital has no record of the present whereabouts of the painting.

In the summer of 1883 Goodman sold two oil paintings at J.P. Mendoza's St. James's Gallery at King Street in London — Fresh and Pure (also known as Pure and Undefiled) and Candidate For The Front Row (also known as First at the Gallery Door). Goodman was a member of London's Savage Club and in 1883 submitted a drawing of the club president, Andrew Halliday, to the club tombola. The same year Goodman also produced a pencil and water colour of two children at the door of a theatre that was staging a performance of the pantomime Little Red Riding Hood. This painting was sold at auction in Dallas, Texas in 2011.

In 1884 Goodman offered a water colour, Longing Eyes, for 10 guineas, at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition. That year the annual exhibition of the City of London Society of Artists moved from its premises at the Worshipful Company of Skinners on Dowgate Hill, to the old law courts at The Guildhall and Goodman submitted Idle Dreams and In Possession. The latter work was of the two playing children of the artist and illustrator Harry Furniss.

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In a departure from painting portraits, around October 1884 Goodman moved to Chalford in the Cotswolds to paint two landscapes of the valley below from the brow of a hill at Cowcombe Woods overlooking the village. He stayed in Chalford for at least five months.

Goodman contributed at least four essays to The Theatre during 1885 and 1886, entitled An English Ballet in Spain, Art Behind the Curtain, An Englishman on the Spanish Stage, and "Box and Cox" in Spanish.

Goodman is also credited with a portrait of the then Duke of Edinburgh (Queen Victoria's second son Alfred). His last Royal Academy submission (1888) was a portrait entitled Mrs. Keeley in her 83rd Year which is recorded as having subsequently found its way to London's bohemian Savage Club, of which the artist was a member from 1873 to 1894 and where his brother Edward was chairman of the committee. Another Keeley painting, Mrs. Keeley At Fourscore (now housed at the Garrick Club) was exhibited at Institute of Oil Painters and Bond Street's Burlington Gallery in 1885. Goodman was an admirer of Mary Anne Keeley and her acting family, publishing an appreciation in 1895 entitled The Keeleys on the Stage and at Home, which contains engravings of several of his portrait paintings. Goodman's life interest in the theatre culminated in an appearance with Mrs. Keeley in a full-scale production on the stage of the Prince of Wales theatre on the night of January 16, 1884. At about the same time he painted the actress, Mrs. Alfred Mellon (née Sarah Woolgar) . Another actress whose portrait Goodman painted was Amy Sedgwick. A year after her death in 1897, her third husband presented the portrait to the Garrick Club, where it remained until 1969. Other arts-related personalities who were captured by Goodman's brush included Negro Delineator, E. W. Mackney, the dramatist Henry Pettitt and composer Sir George A. MacFarren (who also sat for Goodman's mother Julia).

In 1887 Goodman exhibited three portraits — Mary Anne Keeley, Fanny Stirling (both presumably loaned from The Garrick Club), and Grace Darling, at the Signor Palladiense Gallery, on Bond Street in London. The Keeley and Stirling portraits were also exhibited in 1887 at Messrs Hennah and Kent's studios in London's Old Kent Road.

In two consecutive annual exhibitions at the Institute of Oil Painters Goodman exhibited Mr Henry Russell (1889), Mr Lionel Brough (1890), and Kathleen, the latter of which was sold at the exhibition.

The following year his portrait of The Late Mr. Wilkie Collins at the age of 56 was shown at The Royal Society of British Artists.

In 1890 Goodman contributed at least one painting to an exhibition in New York. The proceeds from the sale of the paintings were to benefit the ailing Irish-born American artist Arthur Lumley (1837–1912).

On February 18, 1895 his sketch Fifteen Minutes Grace was performed at The Prince of Wales Club).

The Mr Henry Russell portrait was donated to The Savage Club in 1890, and they lent it to the Exhibition of Dramatic and Musical Art at The Grafton Galleries in 1897.