Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Goodall, Edward
GOODALL, EDWARD (1795–1870), line-engraver, was born at Leeds on 17 Sept. 1795. He was entirely self-taught, and owed his proficiency solely to his own ability and perseverance. From the age of sixteen he practised both engraving and painting; but having attracted the attention of Turner by one of his pictures exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1822 or 1823, the latter offered him as many plates to engrave from his paintings as he would undertake. This decided his future course as a landscape engraver, and his principal plates were from the works of the great landscape painter. These included ‘Cologne,’ ‘Tivoli, with the Temple of the Sybil,’ ‘Caligula's Bridge’—a commission from the artist which was never published—‘Old London Bridge,’ and several plates for the ‘England and Wales’ series, and the ‘Southern Coast.’ To these must be added the exquisite little vignettes for Rogers's ‘Italy’ and ‘Poems,’ and the illustrations to Campbell's ‘Poems.’ He engraved also ‘A Seaport at Sunset’ and ‘The Marriage Festival of Isaac and Rebecca’ after Claude Lorrain, a ‘Landscape, with Cattle and Figures,’ after Cuyp, and ‘The Market Cart’ after Gainsborough, all for the series of ‘Engravings from the Pictures in the National Gallery,’ published by the Associated Engravers; ‘The Ferry Boat,’ after F. R. Lee, for Finden's ‘Royal Gallery of British Art;’ and ‘The Castle of Ischia,’ after Clarkson Stanfield, for the Art Union of London. Although landscape engraving was his speciality, he also executed several figure subjects, more especially after the paintings of his son, Frederick Goodall, R.A. Among these were ‘The Angel's Whisper’ and ‘The Soldier's Dream,’ ‘The Piper’ (engraved for the Art Union of London), ‘Cranmer at the Traitor's Gate,’ and ‘The Happy Days of Charles the First,’ all after Frederick Goodall; and ‘The Chalk Waggoner’ after Rosa Bonheur. He also engraved some plates for the ‘Amulet’ and for the ‘Art Journal,’ the latter comprising ‘Raising the Maypole,’ ‘A Summer Holiday,’ ‘The Swing,’ ‘Felice Ballarin reciting Tasso,’ ‘Hunt the Slipper,’ ‘Arrest of a Peasant Royalist, Brittany, 1793,’ ‘The Post-boy,’ and ‘The School of Sultan Hassan,’ all after Frederick Goodall; ‘The Bridge of Toledo’ after David Roberts; ‘Amalfi, Gulf of Salerno,’ after George E. Hering; ‘Manchester from Kersal Moor,’ after W. Wyld; ‘Evening in Italy,’ after T. M. Richardson; ‘The Monastery,’ after O. Achenbach; and ‘Dido building Carthage,’ ‘Caligula's Palace and Bridge, Bay of Baiæ,’ and ‘Ulysses deriding Polyphemus,’ after Turner.
Goodall's fame rests mainly upon his plates after Turner, which are executed with great delicacy and beauty. He died at Hampstead Road, London, on 11 April 1870, leaving three sons, Frederick Goodall, R.A., Edward A. Goodall, and Walter Goodall [q. v.], members of the Royal Society of Painters in Water-Colours, and a daughter, Eliza Goodall, afterwards Mrs. Wild, who exhibited some domestic subjects at the Royal Academy and British Institution between 1846 and 1855.
[Art Journal, 1870, p. 182; Bryan's Dict. of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves, 1886, i. 584.]