portrait of the artist as a young man

I went to Paisley Grammar School. The teachers quickly realised that I was not academic, because the only thing I was interested in was art. The school accepted that and didn’t push me to study. They always encouraged my art. I never took my school leaving exams. All I wanted to do was to start work as an artist as soon as I possibly could. The board of the Glasgow School of Art decided to admit me even though I was too young according to the rules. The Glasgow School of Art was an extraordinary place to be a student. I was privileged. Even the building itself is a masterpiece, and I realised as soon as I entered it that it was a kind of cathedral to art. It was a happy and interesting time. I learned about art, and also about life. I picked up a lot from watching artists work, probably more than I did from the teachers, though some of them were very inspiring.

alexander goudie

* 2. Life Study Female Nude, 1954 pencil on paper, 43 x 31 cm

Alexander Goudie was born in 1933 in the town of Paisley, an engineering and textile town to the West of Glasgow. The Goudies were not an overtly artistic family, but as a boy Alexander was not discouraged in his persistent habit of drawing with a pencil almost everything that he saw. Goudie’s father was a master-plumber, a tradesman who was happy to work at a skilled craft with his hands and who recognized a similar manual dexterity in his son.

Goudie’s distinctive talent categorised him as a special case when he applied to enter The Glasgow School of Art and he was admitted at an unusually early age. The traditions of an earlier era were still strong while Goudie was a student. An understanding of values of colour and of tone were the hallmarks of teaching in the School. This emphasis on the craft of painting was enthusiastically received by a young man who was already developing a natural ability for handling paint. In 1955 his unrivalled facility as a draughtsman and colourist was acknowledged by the School in the award of the Newbery Medal.

Goudie would be the first to acknowledge the influence of the teaching of David Donaldson, not only in his work but in his early decision to become a portrait painter. Portrait painting has a strong tradition in Scotland but the Glasgow Boys, particularly John Lavery, James Guthrie and George Henry, were to apply to it modern ideas. Their work extended beyond the formal commissioned portrait to encompass Social Realism as inspired by J.F. Millet and Jules Bastien-Lepage. These Glasgow artists who had reacted so strongly to French painting of the 1870s and 1880s, directed Goudie’s attention to Manet, the French Impressionists and PostImpressionists.

* 3. Ironing, c.1950 watercolour on paper, 42 x 33 cm Throughout the 1950s, Paris had become the Mecca for almost all of the painters emerging from the four art Schools in Scotland. One of those was Alexander Goudie. In 1953 Goudie spent six weeks in Paris on a scholarship won while he was still a student. The visit had an enormous impact on him. Although he had already produced a number of allegorical compositions Goudie believed that painting should be firmly based on reality. The Glasgow Boys had revitalised a Scottish tradition of painting real life subjects initiated by David Wilkie. Their approach to such subject matter was directed by their knowledge of Millet and Bastien-Lepage but Goudie realised that its ultimate source was Courbet. To encounter A Burial at Ornans in all its vastness in the Louvre reinforced his admiration for Courbet’s achievement and confirmed for him the importance of clear design in his own compositions.

When my father enrolled at Glasgow School of Art, he was only a boy of 16. During the five years he spent studying there his work evolved hugely, from tentative watercolours and domestic scenes, to complex and stylised mythological compositions that reveal the influence of the artists he most admired; Puvis de Chavannes and Picasso.

lachlan goudie

At The Glasgow School of Art, Benno Schotz, the head of sculpture, had recognised a dual talent in the young man. He encouraged him to look at Rodin and Gaudier-Brzeska, sculptors who shared with Goudie a similar talent and fluency in drawing. Goudie was persuaded by Schotz to experiment with modelling and displayed an immediate rapport with the medium. Visiting Paris and the Musée Rodin, therefore, had a particular appeal. Rodin’s vast oeuvre, his enormous personality and his gift for making direct statements with an unaffected vitality impressed Goudie:

Rodin has always been, for me, larger than life. I’m more interested in a kind of vulgar strength than in a petite exquisiteness.

Goudie had also discovered that the work of the old masters meant a great deal to him. Three painters made a particular impact – Tintoretto, Rubens and Matisse. Whatever else these painters had in common, they shared a love of colour, gesture, and – very important for a young man just emerging into the austerity of post-war Britain – they all exuded a love of life, a joie de vivre which struck a chord with the young Goudie. He was totally absorbed in what he calls the ‘exoticism’ of these painters, their love of the sensual image of the human figure which would stay with him…

* 4. Idyll, 1958 watercolour and pen on paper, 32 x 38 cm My pictures were full of diverse influences. Augustus John, Rembrandt, Matisse all figured strongly in these early works after I left the Art School. Things began to come together. I went abroad to France and Spain. I saw pictures here I hadn’t seen in Scotland and a way of life that I found immediately attractive, which pointed out a direction that it seemed perfectly natural for me to take.

In 1957 Goudie joined his friends, John and Michelle Cunningham in Spain, where he spent several months in Toledo. This was Goudie’s first prolonged encounter with El Greco and Velázquez, who were to be of considerable importance to him in his future career. The following year Goudie was back in France, touring through Royan, Biarritz, and the Pyrenees before arriving at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port where he began to paint the landscape around him. One of these paintings was later purchased by Glasgow Art

Gallery (Evening Light, Saint Lizier). He had so far painted few landscape pictures but he was immediately aware of its possibilities and the pleasures it gave him. It confirmed his deeply held belief that a painter should be capable of responding to what is put before him, and finding art in the least complicated and least favourable aspects of his life. When back in Glasgow, Michelle Cunningham introduced him to a young French girl she had met. Marie-Renée Dorval was from Brittany, not an area Goudie knew well at all but he was aware of its importance to artists. Gauguin’s Vision After the Sermon (Jacob Wrestling with the Angel) in the National Gallery of Scotland, was one of the Pont-Aven paintings which was to have a crucial effect on him. Goudie still painted in a very tonal manner and Gauguin’s use of stark contrasts made the young man aware of the importance of tone linked to a sense of pattern and balance in pictorial design.

roger billcliffe

Adapted from Goudie’s Brittany, an essay by Roger Billcliffe published in the monograph of the same title.

* 5. Self Portrait in Red, c.1965 oil on canvas, 51 x 51 cm

Goudie and his brother John, 1942 Alexander Goudie at Paisley Grammar School, 1950

From left: Stephen Orr, Marie-Renée Goudie, Mrs Orr, Alexander Goudie, c.1967

Painting in Spain, 1957

6. Still Life with Coffee Pot and Frying Pan, c.1970 oil on canvas, 35 x 45 cm

7. Academy Nude, c.1955 oil on canvas, 45 x 33 cm

This study of Queen Mariana by Velázquez represents, for me, the most personal and intimate recollection of my father as an artist. It brings me back to walking through the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Scotland, where he gave me his own private masterclasses on the actual art of painting and his vision of what it meant to be an artist. He often spoke of Zurbarán, El Greco, Velázquez, Ribera, Goya. Our final ‘grand tour’ was when we both went to see the retrospective of Velázquez at the Prado in the 80s.

gwen goudie

* 8. Study of Queen Mariana of Austria, after Velázquez, c.1998 oil on canvas, 96.5 x 106.5 cm

* 9. Study of King Charles I, after Van Dyck, c.1995 oil and charcoal on board, 112 x 133 cm

10. Crowning the May Queen, 1958 gouache on paper, 43 x 55 cm

11. The Bathers, 1963 charcoal and chalk on canvas, 108 x 133 cm

12. In the Garden of Love, c.1970 oil and charcoal on canvas, 142 x 284 cm

There is a portrait of the young Alexander Goudie standing causally but elegantly dressed, his right thumb tucked into his trouser pocket. He looks out quizzically, guarding his opinion closely, he could be a renaissance prince, Hamlet even. His hair and clothes suggest that. Yet we know that this is a self portrait of a 20th century artist who must have looked into a mirror to observe himself and that serious, concentrated expression is the artist scrutinising himself while he paints. As he assesses himself we assess his art. And what art and artistry there is to admire: such freshness of paint, such facility of brush work, such a liveliness of surface and such enjoyment of colour. Here is an artist at the top of his form. Confidence and exuberance are the hallmarks of Alexander Goudie’s art as the works in this exhibition demonstrate. They reveal his enjoyment of life, his appreciation of beautiful women, his relish of strong character and his pleasure in social interaction. His ability to convey these things through paint is what made him such a fine artist.

james holloway, former director, scottish national portrait gallery

Joie de Vivre! The Art of Alexander Goudie, Memorial Exhibition, Paisley Art Gallery & Museum, 2008

13. Self Portrait in Breton Gilet, Red Background, c.1969 oil on canvas, 76 x 63 cm

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