Frederick Goodall

Inscriptionback to top

Signed in pencil with monogram and dated lower right: ‘FG / Nov:r 8th’.

This portraitback to top

Goodall is clean-shaven in his portraits until the 1870s. In Egypt in 1870 he grew a beard and moustache which, combined with the adoption of oriental dress, made him unrecognizable to visitors and passing friends. For instance Sir Richard Owen met him painting at Sakkara: ‘I did not wonder at his not recognising me’, wrote Goodall in his memoirs, ‘for I had grown a beard and moustache, and wore a red fez, and was dressed entirely in white.’[1] He appears to have kept the facial hair from that time onwards, and it transformed his face to a remarkable degree (see ‘All known portraits’). His appearance in NPG 6841 is not far from that in the photograph by Lock & Whitfield, published in 1878.

The drawing is crisply executed in coloured pencils. It is valuable as one of only two self-portraits that are known to survive. It hung on the stairs in the hall of the artist’s splendid mansion at 62 Avenue Road, Regent’s Park, until the bankruptcy sale in November 1902.[2] It was recognized in a London antique shop in the 1950s by a descendant, the picture restorer Stewart Goodall (1919–68), and generously offered to the Gallery by another descendant, Richard Goodall, in 2008.[3]

Carol Blackett-Ord

Footnotesback to top

1) Goodall 1902, p.99.
2) F. Miller & Reid, 19 Nov. 1902 (588), ‘A Crayon Portrait, Mr. F. Goodall, R.A.’.
3) NPG RP 6841. R. Goodall believes the portrait belongs to the 1860s.

Physical descriptionback to top

Head-and-shoulders to left, eyes to front, wearing moustache and goatee.

Provenanceback to top

Goodall bankruptcy sale, F. Miller & Reid, 19 Nov. 1902 (588); Stewart S. Goodall, 1950s; given by Richard Goodall (sitter’s great-nephew), 2008.

Reproductionsback to top

Country Life, vol.146, 17 July 1969, p.180.

http://www.goodallartists.ca/newpage3.htm

View all known portraits for Frederick Goodall