GOFF, Col. ROBERT CARL (1837-1922)

"The Royal Naval College on the Thames, Greenwich" (c.1900)
Watercolour
20 x 25cm
Signed lower left
*private collection, Sydney
 
Goff was an influential Irish Genre Painter and Printmaker (and follower of the legendary James McNeill Whistler). He obtained a commission in the 50th Queen's Own Regiment just before his eighteenth birthday and fought in the Crimean War. He became adjutant of his regiment before going to Ceylon and then transferring to the 15th Foot then the Coldstream Guards. Having achieved the rank of colonel, he retired from the Coldstream Guards in 1878 to concentrate on his art work, having learned etching from a fellow officer. Goff is recognised as a significant figure in the British Etching Revival, led by James M. Whistler (1834–1903). Goff exhibited his prints regularly with the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and was elected a Fellow of the Society in 1887. Goff lived in London and Brighton but travelled and painted extensively. He created works of Brighton, Hove and Sussex, as well as pictures from his travels in other parts of Britain, Italy, Egypt and Japan. He moved in the 1890s to a villa overlooking Florence, then moved during the First World War to Villa Valerie, Bellaria, La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland where he died in 1922. Brighton and Hove Museum and Art Gallery hold a large collection of Goff's work, culminating in the acclaimed exhibition "Robert Goff: An Etcher in the Wake of Whistler (29 November 2011 to 29 April 2012)". The exhibition comprised approx. 50 works by Goff, mostly etchings and some other works on paper. This stunning landscape was produced early in his career, at a time when he exhibited regularly at the Royal Academy (1870-1890). During the early 1880s he exhibited several works of Dover and it's surroundings; most probably the location of this work.