Walter Goodman - The Printseller's Window

The Printseller's Window

Around 1883 Goodman painted a fascinating trompe l'oeil depiction of the contents of a printseller's window (including the merchant himself, placing a figure in the display). Twelve carte-de-visite photographs are strung across the shop window, along with other photographs depicting artists and critics such as John Ruskin, Mariano Fortuny y Marsal and Augustus Sala.

The Printseller's Window (also known as The Printseller or A Print Seller's Window in The Strand) was displayed at various London galleries, including St. James's Gallery in 1883, the Burlington Gallery in Bond Street (together with Mrs. Keeley at Fourscore) from August 1885, Earls Court British and Foreign Art galleries Section, and at Imre Kiralfy's Venice in London exhibition at Olympia in 1892 (where the painting was entitled The Venetian Printseller). The painting was widely reported in the London and provincial newspapers of the day.

This impressive work was also displayed provincially at various locations, including The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool in 1883. It was offered for sale at the Liverpool Autumn Exhibition the same year, but priced at 315 pounds the painting did not find a buyer, causing the artist to re-exhibit it in 1884 at the Royal Scottish Academy. Other recorded provincial exhibitions which included The Printseller's Window are Folkestone Art Treasures Exhibition (1886) (together with his portrait of Wilkie Collins), Edinburgh Academy of Arts, and Goodman's own studio at 88 Kings Road in Brighton in 1891. The latest recorded date that The Printseller's Window was shown in Britain was at a show entitled 19th Century Society in 1894. The Printseller's Window was acquired by a Connecticut art dealer in 1965, and eventually by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester in 1998.

The Printseller's Window is now considered an important example of its genre. The history of the painting and its ownership between the late 1890s and 1965 is unknown, and how it reached the United States is still a mystery.

The Printseller's Window was the subject of an exhibition, Walter Goodman's The Printseller's Window: Solving A Painter's Puzzle at the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester August 14, 2009 – November 15, 2009. A catalog of the exhibition has been published.