Memories. Old Tasmanian Doorway

Biography:

Joseph Christian Goodhart (1875-1952)

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). 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).  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 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. Two years later he is
reported to have won the gold medal for window dressing awarded by the
magazine Draper of Australia. 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.

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.” 

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

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. 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, following
which, in April 1929, two of his etchings The Poppet Head and Klondyke
Propty. Mine were exhibited at the Paris Salon.