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Historical Artist - Robert Gwelo Goodman (1871 - 1939)
Robert Gwelo Goodman was born in Taplow, England 1871 - 1939
Art Education
- Robert Goodman studied evening classes under JS Morland, Cape Town.
- 1895 Académie Julian, Paris, under Bougureau, Constant Bachet and Gabriel Ferrier
(Matisse was a fellow-student).
Short Artist Biography
- The son of a British Railways employee.
- 1886 Robert Goodman came to South Africa with his parents.
- 1888 Became a railway-clerk, first in Paarl, later in Newlands. Robert Goodman began to attend
art-classes; much encouraged by Morland.
- 1895 With an allowance of R80 per year from his father (out of his modest income as
station-master at Wynberg, Cape Province), supported by a guarantee of R120 per year from the
similarly needy Morland, he set off for Paris.
- 1897 Morland lost his teaching-post and could no longer spare him any money; life became
extremely difficult. Robert Goodman moved to London and settled in Chelsea.
- 1898 Three landscapes accepted by the Royal Academy; subsequently a few portrait
commissions.
- 1900 Robert Goodman received permission from Lord Roberts to sketch the battlefields of the
Anglo-Boer War and visited South Africa. Before returning to England, Robert Goodman decided to
adopt a distinctively South African name. He chose the name of the young Rhodesian town which
had been founded in 1985, the year he commenced his professional career and ever afterwards
signed himself R Gwelo Goodman or RG Goodman.
- 1901 – 1915 Goodman slowly established a reputation as a landscape painter in England.
He traveled and painted in India during 1903/04; the trip was followed by a period of
appreciable success. Then, in 1911 Robert Goodman contracted rheumatic fever and came out to
South Africa to recover; visited Johannesburg.
- 1915 Robert Goodman won a Gold Medal for pastel drawings at the San Francisco International
Exhibition. He returned to South Africa; took a studio in Cape Town.
- 1917 Robert Goodman was included in Roworth’s essay on South African Landscape Painting
in the Studio publication, “Art of the British Empire Overseas”; he lived for six
months in Howard Pim’s Johannesburg home, painting the mines and participating in the
activities of the Johannesburg Sketch Club; began to produce studies of flowers.
- 1929 He rented the neglected 18th Century Newlands House, adapted it and moved in with his
wife; this was the beginning of an abiding interest in the preservation of architectural
treasures; also a period of many paintings of cape Dutch homesteads. Illustrated Dorothea
Fairbridge’s “Historic Houses of South Africa” (pub 1922).
- 1929 – 1939 During the last ten years of his life, in addition to his painting Robert
Goodman spent much time in architectural activity; among other things, he restored and
reconstructed the old Cannon Brewery as his own family home, planned the restoration of Newlands
House for Joyce Newton-Thomson (his later biographer) and designed Tongaat Township, Natal, for
Saunders Sugar Estates.
- 1933 Robert Goodman was commissioned to paint ten mural panels for South African House,
London. Towards the end of his life he became totally absorbed in gardening and painted a
preponderance of flower-studies. Died of a stroke.
- 1951 He was the subject of a monograph, “Gwelo Goodman – South African
Artist”, by Joyce Newton-Thompson, published by Howard Timmins.
Art Exhibitions
- 1898 Royal Academy; subsequently included almost annually throughout his life.
- 1901 First one-man art exhibition, Cape Town.
- 1904 First one-man London art exhibition; many subsequently in England and South Africa.
- 1919 Major art exhibition in Johannesburg, showing his pictures of the mines (one in
Johannesburg Art Gallery) together with nine flower-pieces.
- 1924 Major art exhibition of 176 South African landscapes at Royal Institute Galleries,
London.
- 1948 Overseas Exhibition of South African Art, Tate Gallery..
Public Art collections
South African National Art Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Durban Art Gallery;
William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley; AC White Gallery, Bloemfontein; Tatham Art Gallery,
Pietermaritzburg; Albany Museum, Grahamstown.
Source
Berman, E. 1994. Art & Artists of South Africa . Southern Book Publishers.
Contemporary South African Artists
Art Galleries in South Africa
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