William Newport Goodell

1908-1999

William Newport Goodell (1908-1999), artist, craftsman, and educator, was born August 16, 1908 in Germantown, Philadelphia. He briefly attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), studying under Pennsylvania impressionist Daniel Garber and noted academician Joseph Thurman Pearson, Jr., before opening his own studio on Germantown Avenue in 1929.

Between 1930 and 1949 Goodell was represented via jury or invitation in a range of major annual and special exhibitions on the East Coast and won several cash awards and purchase prizes, including the First Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy of Design annual exhibition in New York in 1933. He also exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Albright Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., the PAFA, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, which houses three of Goodell's paintings in its permanent collection.

Style and Influences: Goodell worked in oils, watercolor, pastels and serigraphy. His easel paintings were bold both in scale and technique and his compositions dynamic, typically combining vigorous diagonal angles and a lofty perspective. Use of impasto, the palette knife, and boldly outlined figures and objects were techniques that contributed to a rugged representational style.

Goodell's work reflects many of the prevailing stylistic influences of the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, he would have been well aware of the work of artists who became known as the Pennsylvania Impressionists, also called the Bucks County Impressionists, who worked in and around New Hope, north of Philadelphia. His instructor Daniel Garber was an early member of the New Hope art colony and an influential teacher, whose technique of backlighting figures is found in several of Goodell's works in which subjects appear bathed in a halo of light (Pastoral, Woman Walking Towards Child, Willow in Sunlight). Like Garber, Goodell's interest was in creating sense of eternal or spiritual light rather than capturing the ephemeral or fleeting effects associated with impressionism.

Goodell was also connected to the New Hope art scene through his sisters, who were both accomplished impressionist painters. Anne Goodell married Julian Lathrop, son of William Langson Lathrop, one of the founders of the New Hope artists' colony, and both Anne and Margaret lived and painted there. But Goodell's studio remained in Philadelphia, and the influence of impressionism both in terms of technique and subject matter was less direct than on his older siblings. Indeed, while the Pennsylvania Impressionists took local scenery and nature as their primary subjects, Goodell often favored full-length figure paintings, sometimes in a plein aire setting, in addition to still lifes, landscapes, and subjects with an element of humor or social commentary.

Goodell's energetic representational style also echoed American Regionalism and the bold, graphic style of public works being commissioned by the WPA's art program. His watercolors of urban and night scenes are reminiscent of American Realism, but while this movement expressed the alienation of modern life, Goodell's portrayals were never desolate. Overall, Goodell's work is characterized by a vitality, sincerity and positivity that were perhaps a debt to his Quaker roots.

Goodell's burgeoning exhibition career was interrupted by the outbreak of WWII. On enlistment in the Naval Reserve in July 1942, he was made carpenters mate 3rd class because he had experience making frames for his paintings. He was promoted to Chief Specialist in visual aids in charge of 18 man art department of the Visual Aids Section of the Naval Training Station at Newport, R.I. Away from his studio during this period, he produced a number of freely rendered watercolors and pastels of life on base in addition to harbor scenes, but fewer large oil paintings (Musician 1st Class, The Piper).

In 1951 Goodell moved to the West Coast for reasons of his wife's health. In California, Goodell exhibited in Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, and San Diego, but exhibition opportunities were fewer, and his easel painting never regained its former momentum.

From 1951 to 1959 he worked as a scientific illustrator at the Navy Electronics Laboratory in San Diego, and in 1959 served as art director at Warner Technical Publications. He dedicated his later years to teaching art and to creative projects in the local community, including dioramas for the Natural History Museum in San Diego in 1974, and an amphitheater for Country Day School in La Jolla, California. After his wife's death in 1980, Goodell briefly resumed painting and between 1993 and 1997 produced a series of life paintings in oil and a final self-portrait.

Teaching Throughout his life, Goodell's art career was pursued concurrently with his teaching career. From 1933-1942 he taught art and crafts (including wrought iron and metal spinning) at the Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. After WWII, Goodell joined the faculty of the Moore Institute of Art, Science, and Industry, teaching drawing, painting and composition (1946-1951). From 1960 to 1983 he taught art and drama at La Jolla Country Day School in La Jolla, Calif., before retiring at age 75.

Crafts Goodell was also an accomplished carpenter, furniture maker and metalworker in both iron and pewter, skills in tune with the Quaker tradition of pursuing the practical arts. He supported himself at art school by repairing and reproducing antique furniture. Always oriented towards the craft aspects of art, he made many of the frames for his large oil paintings, possibly influenced by renowned Bucks County framemaker Ben Badura, who is known to have framed at least two of Goodell's works. In 1932 Goodell embarked on renovating 5269 Germantown Avenue, a house in the colonial Germantown Historic District of Philadelphia, undertaking all rebuilding, carpentry, cabinetry and furnishing in return for studio and living quarters.