Mary Godwin 1887-1960

Mary Godwin (1887-1960) was one of those painters who was true, over a long working life as an artist, to the methods and traditions of her teachers Walter Sickert and Harold Gilman. She was a member of the London Group (LG) from 1914 until the year of her death in 1960 and regularly showed at least three works at the annual exhibitions. There was a consistency of style, colour and subject throughout this period of almost half a century. In the early years leading up to the 1920s Mary Godwin was regarded as something of a radical by some of the more conservative critics. However she soon became an established artist, and achieved wide recognition as a fine painter during the 1920s and 1930s. Mary Godwin was born at Stoke Bishop in Bristol in 1887. She moved to London to art study at The Women’s Department of King’s College under the painter John Byam Shaw 1908-1910, and then studied at the Westminster School of Art under her mentors Walter Sickert 1911-1914 and Harold Gilman 1915. Her first recorded exhibits were shown in 1913 at the New English Art Club (NEAC) and at the London Salon in the Allied Artists Association (AAA) show. She gained early notice from the critics as her painting ‘A Back-Room in Somerstown’ was illustrated in The Sunday Times in 1914. The Queen magazine in 1915 noted her mastery in ‘the subtleties of light and colour’. During those early years she was known as Miss E M Godwin (Emily Mary Godwin) and as there was another E Godwin exhibiting at that time from an address nearby in Chelsea I imagine that she decided to drop all reference to her first given name. Thereafter she became known simply as Mary Godwin. Research suggests that she had an artist sister, Miss L C Godwin, who continued to live at Stoke Bishop, Bristol before moving to Bude in Cornwall circa 1920. In addition to showing regularly with the LG, NEAC and the AAA, Mary Godwin exhibited at leading provincial galleries, such as Manchester City Art Gallery in 1916, and at the National Portrait Society, the Goupil Gallery, Society of Present Day Artists at the Chenil Galleries, the Fifth Group at the Bloomsbury Gallery, and at the Royal Academy in 1940. In January 1936 a solo show comprising thirty three paintings was held at the Leger Galleries in London W1 on which The Times commented: ‘They are so sedate in feeling and so completely realised in execution. That they remember Mr Sickert is evident and their precision occasionally recalls Mr Ginner but the artist has her own taste in colour’. One of the paintings from the 1936 show, ‘The Bay’, was illustrated in The Apollo Magazine at the time, and is included in the present exhibition. Although Mary Godwin is best known as a painter in oils, she also worked as a watercolourist and etcher. She found her subjects in quiet interiors, often with still life, and in the corners of squares, streets and gardens in London, and in the towns, villages, coasts and countryside of the West Country. She also worked widely in France and painted in Madeira prior to the Second World War. She spent most of her life in Hampstead, London NW3. These are essentially happy pictures, of everyday scenes, full of rich harmonious colour, carefully and lovingly worked and with a fine texture to the paint surface. Louise Kosman is delighted to present a collection of the artist’s work which will hopefully support and lead to a re-evaluation of Mary Godwin’s contribution to art in Britain in the first half of the 20th century. Grant Waters copyright