ALEXANDER GOUDIE (SCOTTISH 1933-2004) §
BOATS IN HARBOUR
£1,875
Auction: 16 April 2020 at 12:00 BST
Description
Signed, mixed media
Dimensions
48.5cm x 63.5cm (19in x 25in)
Footnote
Biography
Alexander Goudie (1933-2004), was one of Scotland's foremost contemporary artists. He was born in Paisley in Renfrewshire. He studied at the Glasgow School of Art, where he received the Newbery medal.
On a trip to France, he visited Brittany, where he met Marie-Renée Dorval. They married in 1962 and her education in art and Breton culture helped establish him as a leading 'Breton' artist and Brittany became one of his main sources of inspiration. He exhibited widely in Brittany and in 1966 for the first time he exhibited his Breton paintings in Edinburgh.
In 1987, he was commissioned to design the interiors and artworks for the ship ‘Bretagne,’ flagship of the Brittany Ferries Company. His work brought together landscapes, small scenes & still lives. The tables of the first class dining room were divided by paintings of food hanging at right angles. The originality of the scheme and the large number of works on display was received with great acclaim at the time.
He liked to see, and attempt, mastery in painting but in a more conventional way; remaining uninspired by 20th century artistic movements, such as cubism or futurism. He has been described as 'an old-fashioned painter,' and for a man who felt that his job as an artist was 'to simply to tell a story in pictures and to speak with a clear voice,' presumably this was a compliment. But for the artistic establishment at this time, that would be far from a positive affirmation of his approach, entirely aside from their thoughts on his technical abilities.
As Sir Timothy Clifford, former Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland eulogised, Goudie 'had the skill and eye to describe, as almost no one else could, the sweating flanks of a cart-horse, the toiling, foreshortened form of a Breton peasant, the sheen on silk velvet, or the glow on a pretty girl's cheek.'