Arthur Clifton Goodwin - Park Street Church, Boston [1908]

Arthur Clifton Goodwin - Park Street Church, Boston [1908], a photo by Gandalf's Gallery on Flickr.

Arthur Clifton Goodwin has been called the painter par excellence of Boston. In a career spanning twenty-nine years this gifted, self-taught artist not only painted Boston in every mood and every weather, but following his 1921 move to New York he also painted the parks and skyscrapers of that metropolis.

Goodwin was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1864 and was raised in the Chelsea section of Boston. He worked as a banker and a paper salesman before deciding at the age of thirty-nine to be a professional artist. After a failed marriage, Goodwin returned to Boston in 1928. Kronberg persuaded him to come to Paris to study the French Impressionists, but on May 19, 1929 on the eve of his departure, Goodwin died. Friends discovered him in his room in the North End, his suitcase packed and his tickets in his pocket. While not allied with any particular school or movement, Goodwin achieved a unique place in American art history as a painter of cityscapes characterised by strong color and an assured, painterly manner.

[Oil on canvas, 30 x 34 inches]