Albert Goodwin was a master of watercolour technique. This shore scene evokes the luminous glow of dusk by using a combination of washing, scumbling and sponging with rich effervescent colours. Albert Goodwin was living in Waterloo Street in Brighton at the time. He exhibited a series of these radiantly atmospheric twilit scenes at the Dudley Gallery from 1866 onwards where they were noted for their magnificent colour, one being described as … all aflame with its crimson sunset (The Spectator, 1866). Under the influence of his mentors, Arthur Hughes, Ford Madox Brown and, to an extent, Samuel Palmer, Albert Goodwin’s landscape watercolours became more poetical toward the end of the 1860s. Nature was to Goodwin a manifestation of God Himself, and painting an outlet for his growing religious spirituality: The whole natural world, down to the smallest detail, is one great allegory, typical of the spiritual world. Our business is to study the natural world as the continued revelation of God, guiding us forever into fresh revelation of Himself. (An extract from Albert Goodwin’s diary quoted in Hammond Smith, Albert Goodwin, RWS 1845-1932, F. Lewis Publishers, Leigh-on-Sea, 1977, page 18)
Sir John Herbert Lewis of Flintshire, North Wales, purchased from the artist By direct descent in the family, to 2000