From The Postmodern To The Pastoral: Two Recent Exhibitions in Hull (3/4) By Philip Wincolmlee-Barnes PortEst Exhibition Photographs by Andrew Quinn 'How to trap this transient thing?'

(1/4), (2/4), (3/4), (4/4).

By contrast to all that high tech postmodernism, at the same time I have been visiting a retrospective of Walter Goodin's work (Above all, the sky), which is indebted to the English love of pastoral scenes and demonstrates, in places, a deference towards a kind of Victorian classical revivalism. (So no video installations here, then - bar a very engaging documentary introducing us to the painter). This exhaustive show runs at the Ferens Art Gallery until January 2009, and will then appear at Beverley Art Gallery and then Sewerby Hall.

For anyone with a passion for the topography of East Yorkshire it will prove to be a very evocative - and perhaps a nostalgic - experience. His output was prodigious and yet, as a local artist myself, I had not previously been aware of this almost overwhelmingly industrious figure. It is worth summarising his life, as this show will undoubtedly renew interest in his accomplishments. He died in 1992 at 85 years old, and had been born in Hull in 1907 (a little before my time, then...). Having lived through all of the significant artistic styles and developments of the 20th Century - not to mention, of course, both world wars - his biography reads like a plot from a Bloomsbury novel. He started his working life as a railway porter, after becoming an orphan, and he got his first break when the renowned Beverley artist Fred Elwell, and the wealthy philanthropist Cecil Bainton, secured him a place at the Royal Academy Schools in London. A precocious talent, Goodin won a number of awards and promotions, but he loathed accepting these in public - this reluctance to 'shine' and to accept honours was to determine much of his career (detrimentally, as some have argued). After his studies, rather than staying in London, he took a studio in Beverley, bringing some of the flair of the art world back with him ('flamboyant black capes, wide-brimmed hats, bow ties and Oxford dual-coloured shoes...')

A work which hinted at an international breakthrough (an opportunity he characteristically did not take advantage of) was the still life painting, Junk. This was upheld as an exemplary example of modernist art by the Royal Academy in 1939, and was subsequently exhibited at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, USA. As with many artistic landmarks, it was more a product of daydreaming than of any measured intent: idly looking around his studio one day he was aghast at the amount of 'rubbish' that was lying around in it.

He subsequently fashioned these objects - a plaster bust, bottles, jugs, a wicker basket, a mirror, etc - into a still life arrangement which, today, still has a rather surreal (and even sinister) aspect to it. Goodin, however, never had much truck with Modernism, and the painting remained something of an anomaly amongst his output (in later years he even used it as a 'dust sheet' whilst redecorating his bathroom...).

It was for his sprawling landscapes that he was to forge his burgeoning reputation - an early painting of a tempestuous storm above the River Humber (illustrated) secured a Turner Prize Gold Medal in 1931. It was geographical locations such as these to which he would return throughout his long and productive life. During World War Two he worked as a balloon operator.

One or two large panoramic paintings of airships looming out of the docks at Hull and Swansea resulted, although Goodin was never granted the position he coveted of becoming an official War Artist. After the war he moved to Bridlington and married Violet Williams in 1951. Not unusually for painters of a certain 'eccentric' persuasion, he wasn't very businesslike and his wife - as well as acting as his muse - assisted him in the more pragmatic aspects of making a living from art. He took up several teaching posts and was influential in the development of numerous art clubs in Bridlington, Beverley and Hull. From his East Coast idyll he worked quietly and diligently, without fuss, establishing his oeuvre of majestic landscapes particular to the region. He tackled coastal scenes around Whitby and Flamborough Head, church scenes in Holderness, the generous sprawl of the Wolds, panoramas of Hull's dock lands, harbour pictures, and private commissions illustrating the gardens, grounds and houses of country estates. He undertook many commercial commissions - including depictions of industry and working life in tanneries and canning factories - and immortalised local market town traditions, such as the Middleton Hunt and race days in Beverley.

Continued .... Next Page (4/4)

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