John Goodchild
John Charles Goodchild was born in London in 1898 and migrated with his family to South Australia in 1913.
After returning from the First World War, he studied at both the South Australian School of Arts & Crafts and the Central School of Arts & Crafts in London. He worked as a commercial artist and art teacher and in 1923 he mounted exhibitions of his work in Adelaide and Sydney, before again returning to London to study engraving and lithography.
In 1929, he and his artist wife Doreen, established an art studio in Adelaide and John exhibited his watercolours with the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, of which he served as president from 1937-40.
Goodchild transitioned easily from drawing and etching to watercolours and oils. He also produced furniture and the lamps and pylons for the Adelaide City Bridge in 1931.
In 1945 he was commissioned by the Australian War Memorial to serve as an official war artist and in the late 1940s he also worked as a cartoonist for the Adelaide News.
Goodchild produced a number of watercolours of Elders Ltd properties in Australia and London, as well as a watercolour of the Scottish childhood home of Alexander Lang Elder, founder of Elder, Smith & Co Ltd. Examples of these can be seen in this exhibition.
He died at his home in Highbury, South Australia in 1980.
