Title

Industrial Imagery and the Etchings of J.C.Goodhart.

Author

Butler, Roger.

Source

Corbett, Gary (ed). Joseph Christian Goodhart. Broken Hill: NSW: Broken Hill City Art Gallery, 1990.

Details

1990

Publication date

1990

ISBN

0-9590885-4-7

Type

Exhibition catalogue essay

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

Industrial imagery and the Prints of J. C. Goodhart.
by Roger Butler

Warehouses look like Palaces

The twilight fog covers the river bank in a halo of poetry; wretched buildings are lost in the misty air; the night makes warehouses look like palaces and the whole city seems to hang in the sky. It is as if we had a fairyland in front of us.
James McNeill Whistler (1)

Until the development of photomechanical methods of reproduction one of the prime functions of printmaking was the dissemination of information. Prints were issued separately or bound into books on every conceivable subject—from theology to cookery.

With the advent of the industrial revolution in the late eighteenth century the printing of images burgeoned. For the masses there were penny encyclopaedias and illustrated magazines; while for the emerging industrial upper class there were prints that recorded their explorations and conquests in the far flung British colonies as well as their great canal, railroad and manufacturing enterprises in England.

The Painter Etchers’ movement that emerged in Great Britain, Europe and the USA in the 1850s sought to free printmaking from the prosaic recording of such events that became the preserve of the illustrated newspapers and documentary photographs.

Artists producing prints—‘Painter Etchers’ - dealt with more enduring themes. The English etcher Seymour Haden (founder of the Royal Painter Etchers’ Society) and Frenchman Camille Corot chose as their subject idyllic unspoilt countryside. The dignity of simple labour was extolled in the prints of Jean Francois Millet and in James McNeill Whistler’s dockside etchings in his Thames Set.

The production of these prints was honest and workmanlike, as suited the subjects. Haden advocated drawing directly from nature onto the plate which was later to be printed cleanly wiped so as to impart only what had been etched into it.

By the 1860s realism was on the decline. The belief that the industrial revolution would benefit all had been shattered. Reports (often containing photographic evidence) describing slum conditions and factory work practices made fine art depiction of commercial and industrial subjects unpalatable to the emerging industrial upper class.

Obviously city and industrial subjects could not be ignored by artists. The new patrons of the arts had made their fortunes in industrial ventures and were for the most part city dwellers. It was Whistler who provided an answer. He advocated clothing the urban landscape “as with a veil . . . the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanile, and the ware houses are palaces in the nights”.(2)

There are two ideas here. One is the veiling of structures with atmospheric tones to disguise their nature. This became common by the 1890s, and Whistler’s ideas of the aestheticised cityscapes were promoted by his followers. It also became one of the tenets of Pictorialist photography, remaining in fashion until the Second World War.

English artist Frank Brangwyn (who had trained as a decorative artist with William Morris), left thin films of ink on his large, boldly worked etching plates of buildings and bridges under construction. When printed these created smokey atmospheric tones that hid all except the abstract silhouettes of the structures.

Whistler’s second contribution was the comparison of modern industrial structures with the great man made monuments of the past. The American printmaker Joseph Pennell (one of Whistler’s most ardent admirers) spent much of his time producing series of prints which equated the ‘Wonders of the Modern World’ with those of the past. Often seen from dramatic view points man made marvels like the great mines and enterprises like the Panama Canal dwarf the workers who are seen to possess little importance.

Pennell had no interest in the use of these modern wonders. “I have never been in them, don't want to go, and have no interest in the social, financial, or sanitary conditions of them. I am . . . simply an artist searching for the Wonder of Work—not for morals—political economy—stories of sweating—the crimes of ugliness. I am trying to record the Wonder of Work as I see it, that is all.”(3)

A great dump acquires . . . the majesty and beauty of a mighty pyramid

Against the evening sky a great dump acquires in the soft light the majesty and beauty of a mighty pyramid. At its feet huddles a cluster of iron buildings, through which aconstant stream of metal pours.
Robert Emerson Curtis(4)

As in Great Britain, Europe and the USA, the work produced by the ‘Painter Etchers’ in Australia was initially dominated by landscape and genre subjects. The choice of subject was strongly influenced by the prints of Whistler and Haden, which could be purchased at commercial galleries in Australia by the 1890s, or viewed in the National Gallery of Victoria where examples had been acquired as part of the Gallery’s first purchases of contemporary etchings in 1892 93.

At the turn of the century a new generation of younger artists travelled overseas to study. As a result of their experiences industrial subjects and printing manipulated by the artist became common.

Federation and war galvanised Australian nationalism in the first two decades of this century. During the First World War the Anzacs were seen to represent the spirit of an emerging nation, while in peacetime ambitious industrial developments fulfilled this role. The industrial projects were characterised by their grand vision and optimism in a technological future.

The great brown coal deposits in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley had been recognised during the war, and in 1919 the State Electricity Commission had been established to exploit its wealth. Yallourn, a model town, was built. Recent technological innovations allowed brown coal to produce electricity.

Another model project using new technology was the soldier resettlement scheme at Red Cliffs where one of Australia’s largest water pumps was constructed to draw water from the Murray River to irrigate the citrus orchards.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge was Australia’s most prominent symbol of industrial maturity. Completed in 1932, in a period of world economic depression, it acted as a public monument to the nation's achievements and future aspirations.

Three years later, in 1935, the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company was celebrated.

Australian artists produced prints of all these new ventures in an Edwardian manner derived from Whistler and his followers. Jessie Traill, who had studied with Frank Brangwyn, produced a series of etchings on Red Cliffs (one print The Great West Window, recalling that of Chartres Cathedral in France), Yallourn and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Robert Emmerson Curtis, who had come under the influence of Pennell as a student in Chicago, also depicted the bridge during its construction. His fourteen lithographs Building the Bridge were published in 1933.

Like Traill, Curtis was fascinated by great industrial achievements and in 1935 he travelled to Broken Hill to draw and describe its “strange and dramatic beauty” fifty years after establishment of ‘the big Australian’.

While there he spent a day with local artist J. C. Goodhart, recalling the early history of Broken Hill.

The Broken Hill City Art Gallery had been established in 1904, but the initial enthusiasm for it was not maintained—a situation which was worsened by the economic consequences of the ‘big strike’ of 1920.

By 1925 the situation had improved and art, once again, was fostered both at school and public level. Artists—particularly from Adelaide—began to travel to Broken Hill to depict the landscape dominated by its hill sized dumps and mine buildings.

John Goodchild visited in March 1925 to draw and paint watercolours of the area and in November Charles Rawlings (whose uncle was a mine manager) held an exhibition of etchings of mine subjects at the Broken Hill Town Hall.

In the review of the exhibition the Barrier Daily Truth critic commented: Gazing at the ungainly dumps and the smokey black shafts of the mines, typical features of the Barrier, silhouetted against the sky, one wonders Whether it is possible for Broken Hill to develop an individuality in the realms of art. Can these scenes of commercial activity, be viewed from an aspect of beauty?(5)

Perhaps challenge excited J. C. Goodhart, who soon after commenced his series of etchings of the local mines.

Joseph Christian Goodhart, Etcher of Broken Hill

Joseph Christian Goodhart was born at Gilberton, a suburb of Adelaide, South Australia, on 9 February 1875. He was the eldest son of Joseph John Goodhart (1837 1887)—a second generation Adelaide resident—and Emma Elizabeth nee Smith (1845 1888).(6)

Following the death of his father in 1887 and mother the following year, Goodhart was forced to curtail his secondary studies at St Peter’s College, Adelaide. The fourteen year old youth was employed by the John Martin department store where he worked as a window dresser, display artist and ticket writer.

On 10 April 1900 J. C. Goodhart, draper of Port Pirie, married Alice Mary Humphris (1870 1955). The couple had four children: Frederick (1901 1937); Mabel (Dame Mable Miller, (1906 1978); Christian (born 1910), and Brian (born 1913).

Soon after their marriage the couple moved to Broken Hill where Goodhart worked for the drapers Boan Brothers, carrying out similar duties to those he had performed at John Martin's.

By 1914 he had saved enough money to begin his own business, Goodhart’s Drapers in Argent Street, which flourished until 1938(7) when the property was sold to the chain store group Woolworths.

By this time J. C. Goodhart had left Broken Hill. In 1936 he had moved to Victor Harbour, South Australia, where he built a studio where he painted, etched, carved and modelled sculpture until his death on 16 April 1952. His widow died three years later on 21 January 1955.

Although Goodhart was interested in art from his youth, the responsibility of providing an income for his brothers and later his own family limited his access to formal art training.

He briefly attended the Adelaide School of Design in 1890 (probably as part of his display and ticket writing training) and again in 1903.(8) Two years later he is reported to have won the gold medal for window dressing awarded by the magazine Draper of Australia.(9)

During the next two decades Goodhart spent his spare time painting, working both in oil and watercolour. It was not until the mid 1920s that he made his first etchings.

A practical man—Goodhart built his own boat and was a proficient carpenter—his initial interest and instruction in etching appears to have come from books. It seems his first experiments occurred in 1924.(10)

In March 1925 the Adelaide artist John Goodchild visited Broken Hill to make drawings and watercolours of the region for his forthcoming exhibition. It was at this time that Goodhart had just received his “. . . first parcel of copper, chemicals and other gear necessary to make a start [in etching] . . . That night, they unpacked the parcel and set to work. Mr Goodchild, taking a piece of copper, laid the etching ground, drew a picture, bit the plate, and in the early hours of the morning they pulled a proof with the help of the domestic mangle.”(11)

Printing was soon improved by the fabrication of an etching press by one of the mine workshops.

Goodhart’s earliest prints were of his immediate Broken Hill environment. Although the art critic William Moore, writing for Art in Australia in 1926, noted that the subjects Goodhart drew in Tasmania (while visiting his daughter) “were more picturesque, it was his mining prints, being a novelty as regards subject [that are] particularly interesting.”(12)

Moore had seen these prints at J. C. Goodhart's only formal exhibition, held at Anthony Hordern's Fine Art Gallery, Sydney in 1926.(13)

Success came quickly. The National Gallery of Victoria purchased the mining subject Klondyke Propty. Mine from his 1926 exhibition, and two more prints in 1930. The Art Gallery of South Australia acquired The Poppet Head and Molle Street Bridge, Hobart in 1928; also in that year Goodhart was elected a member of the Australian Painters Etchers’ Society with whom he exhibited regularly until 1936.(14)

Goodhart’s position amongst Australian printmakers was assured when in 1928 Campbell Dodgson, Keeper of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum wrote informing him of his interest in a group of five prints,(15) following which, in April 1929, two of his etchings The Poppet Head and Klondyke Propty. Mine were exhibited at the Paris Salon.

Although these are the only exhibitions known to have included prints by Goodhart, his work seems to have reached a wide market. His Tasmanian prints were sold through a Hobart outlet (probably Fuller’s Bookshop), and he acted as his own agent in Broken Hill, where prints were exhibited in his store where they could be purchased.

Another avenue of promotion (and probably sales) was through the publication in 1933 of A Souvenir of Broken Hill. Etchings by J. C. Goodhart. Self financed, this limited edition book |provided a brief anecdotal introduction, a reproduction of his Self Portrait 1931, and illustrations of twelve of his important Broken Hill etchings.

Through this localised publicity J. C. Goodhart’s name became synonymous with prints of Broken Hill. The Bulletin reported that “his work has been carried all over the world by visitors to the great field, and probably not even the incomparable Norman Lindsay’s etchings are more widely distributed”(17)

It was a claim that was not unfounded - Goodhart’s prints even entered the collection of the White House, Washington, DC, after being purchased by President Hoover, one of the founders of what is now the Rio Tinto Zinc Corp. Ltd at Broken Hill.

The majority of the images exhibited by Goodhart were of and around Broken Hill, but there are also etchings of Tasmania, Western Australia, Victoria and other parts of New South Wales which are essentially picturesque views. This category of Goodhart’s etched work sits comfortably with that of other artists who exhibited with the conservative Australian Painter Etcher’s Society.

In the final analysis it is Goodhart’s choice of industrial subject matter in his prints that distinguishes him from his contemporaries. Goodhart himself was aware of this. His book A Souvenir of Broken Hill explains: “. . . that when the mines have all been worked out and forgotten, Broken Hill will still be remembered by the art of J.C. Goodhart.”(18)

References

1 As quoted in Photo Vision 5, July September 1982, p.50.
2 ‘Mr Whistler's Ten O'Clock, in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, London: William Heinemann, 1890, p.144.
3 Joseph Pennell, Joseph Pennell's Pictures of the Wonder of Work, Philadelphia: J.B. Lipplincott Co., 1916, pl.VIII.
4 R. Emerson Curtis, 'Broken Hill Impressions', Sydney Mail, 20 March 1935, p.10.
5 Barrier Daily Truth, 19 November 1925.
6 Biographic information is mainly derived from Jill Statton (ed.) Biographical Index of South Australians 1836 1885 Adelaide: South Australian Genealogy and Heraldry Society, 1986, vol.2 p.589 (Goodhart is referred to as Goodheart [sic].) Additional information from Births, Deaths and Marriages Registration Division, Department of Public and Consumer Affairs, South Australia.
7 Goodhart draper is first listed in Sand’s Sydney and New South Wales Directory in 1911.
8 Catalogue of British and Australian Prints, Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia, 1930, p.35.
9 This is noted by William Moore, The Story of Australian Art, Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934, vol.2, p.134. Examination of the relevant issues of Draper of Australia by library staff of the Power House Museum have failed to confirm this.
10 William Moore. 'The Year's Etching' in Art in Australia, Series 3, no.18, December 1926, p.24.
11 A Souvenir of Broken Hill. Etchings by J C Goodhart, Broken Hill [J C Goodhart c1933]. unpaginated.
12 William Moore, “The Year’s Etching” in Art and Australia, Series 3, no.18, December 1926, p.24 Goodhart’s etching Klondyke Propty. Mine was illustrated.
13 See advertisement Art in Australia, series 3, no.18, December 1926. Goodhart's etching North Mine, Broken Hill was illustrated.
14 See:
1928 Sydney 8 23 June
Catalogue of the Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Australian Painter Etchers’ Society. Art Gallery, Education Department. 
                                                                            £ s d
124 Ross Bridge                                                  2 2 0
125 Tasmanian club                                            1 1 0
126 North Mine, Broken Hill                                  1 1 0
127 The Day Shift                                                3 3 0
128 Klondyke                                                       3 3 0
129 Solitude                                                         1 11 6

1928 Melbourne 11 24 December
Exhibition of Etchings by The Australian Painter Etchers' Society. The New Gallery, 107 Elizabeth Street.
                                                                               £ s d
41 Solitude 2 2 0
42 ‘Finance’ (Collins St., Melbourne)                      1 1 0
43 German Charley's Shanty 1 11 6
44 Molle St. Bridge, Hobart (Adelaide Art Gallery) 2 2 0
45 The Old Ross Tannery                                      2 2 0
46 ‘De Bavay’s’, Broken Hill                                    2 2 0
47 ‘Conquest’ (Broken Hill Mines)                           2 2 0

1929 Sydney 18 30 November
Catalogue of an Exhibition of recent paintings and etchings by members of the Australian Painter Etchers’ Society. Farmer’s ‘Blaxiand’ Galleries, 9th Floor, New Building.
89 The Poppet Head etching                                  3 gns
90 A Bush Shipyard etching                                  3 gns
91 Prosperity etching                                             3 gns
92 Desert Gums soft ground etch.                         2 gns

1931 Sydney 30 November 9 December
Catalogue of Annual Exhibition Australian Painter Etchers’ Society. David Jones Ltd. 

                                                                                £ s d
49 Guard Tower (Port Arthur) etching                   3 3 0
50 Model Prison (Port Arthur) etching                     2 2 0
51 Self Portrait etching                                            2 2 0

1932 Sydney 21 March 3 April
Sydney Harbour Bridge Celebrations . . . Etching Exhibition by the Australian Painter Etchers' Society.
Education Department's Art Gallery, Loftus Street. 
                                                                                £ s d
196 Klondyke                                                           3 3 0
197 The Popper Head                                              3 3 0
198 Journey’s End                                                   2 2 0
199 Morning                                                             2 2 0
200 Wind swept                                                      1 11 6
201 Northern Group (Broken Hill Mines)                  2 2 0
202 Central Power Station (Broken Hill)                  3 3 0

1934 Sydney 3 14 December
The Painter Etchers’ and Graphic Art Society of Australia. Exhibition, 1934. Education Department’s
Gallery, Loftus Street.
52 St. Paul’s, Melbourne etching                             4 gns

1935 Sydney 8 19 October
Catalogue Second Annual Exhibition. Painter Etchers’and Graphic Art Society of Australia. Blaxland
Galleries, 9th floor. 
                                                                                £ s d
60 Road Menders, Gippsland soft ground              2 2 0

1936 Sydney 28 October 13 November
194 Pictures at the Annual Exhibition by the Painter Etchers' and Graphic Art Society of Australia. David Jones’, George Street Store.
81 Self Portrait drypoint                                           2 gns
82 Sunshine and Shower etching and aquatint      1 gn
83 Friends’ School, Hobart etching and aquatint     2 gns
84 Stepping Stones etching                                    2 gns

15 Bulletin, 14 November 1928, p.37, col.2. Five etchings were acquired by the British Museum.
16 Societe des Artistes Francais. Salon de 1929. Cat. no.4407 The poppet head; Cat. no.4408 Klondyke.
17 Bulletin, 14 November 1928, p.37, co.2.
18 A Souuenir of Broken Hill, Etchings by J C Goodhart, Broken Hill [J C Goodhart, c1933]. unpaginated. The book is signed and numbered by the artist but the total number produced is not recorded.

© Roger Butler, 1990
Published in ‘Industrial Imagery and the prints of J.C. Goodhart’, Joseph Christian Goodhart, exhibiton catalogue, Broken Hill City Council, 1990

 

Last Updated

03 Dec 2012