Reginald Goodfellow: Audacious Art Deco Nude, 1918

An extraordinarily expressive and audacious work by Reginald Goodfellow (1894-1985). It is hard to believe that this modern and expressive nude was painted over a hundred years ago, in 1918!

The picture also has a lovely provenance: its previous owner was a British, Paris-based authority on the art deco period, who was a great champion of the artist.

Goodfellow was a painter, draughtsman and printmaker born in West Kensington, London and brought up in Lambeth, being educated locally. He showed an early aptitude for drawing and was apprenticed to a structural engineer. He served in Mesopotamia with the Royal Engineers during WWI. Afterwards he joined the Ministry of Works as a structural engineer and remained there until his retirement in 1959. He had no formal art training until 1927 when he attended classes at Westminster School of Art and was taught by Walter Bayes. He continued painting while working for the M.o.W. and exhibited once at the Royal Academy in 1939. After his death, Michael Parkin Fine Art mounted the show 'Pupil and Master' (Goodfellow and Bayes) in 1986. His work was included in Sally Hunter Fine Art exhibition ' Twenties Veterans', 1988.

Our exquisite ink and watercolour painting measures 26 x 32 cm at sight. It is signed and sated July 1918 at the lower right. The overall framed size is 45 x 53 cm.