Viva Brighton Issue #63 May 2018

CURATOR’S CHOICE
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A REDISCOVERED ARTIST’S HOUSE
ROBERT CHARLES GOFF’S WICK STUDIO
In 2012 I curated my first
exhibition at Brighton
Museum, a display of
around 50 works by the
artist Robert Charles
Goff (1837-1922), whose
etchings and paintings
earned him an international
reputation during his
lifetime. A fervent traveller,
he found subjects for
his art in Italy, Egypt,
Japan, Holland and
Switzerland, but he had
a special connection with
England’s south coast.
He seems to have been
particularly drawn to
Sussex throughout his life
and kept a place in Hove
for the best part of 33
years. His love of Brighton & Hove is reflected
in some of his finest and most popular etchings,
such as The Destruction of the Chain Pier (1896)
and The Metropole Hotel (c1895). He painted and
etched views of the sea, shorelines and waterways
in every phase of his career, wherever he worked
and lived. In one dramatic etching, The South
Cone (c1896) Goff depicts waves crashing
precariously around the end of the West Pier.
Goff moved into a large house on the east side of
Adelaide Crescent in or around 1889. He left the
house in 1903 to move to Italy with his second
wife Clarissa, but kept a studio, complete with a
printing press, in Holland Road until his death in
1922. ‘Wick Studio’ was purpose-built for him in
1895, with more living and working space added
Image courtesy of Alexandra Loske
in 1907. It backed onto his
home in Adelaide Crescent
and was connected to it via
some steps which are still
there today.
Even after he left to live
in Italy, Goff remained
involved with the Brighton
& Hove art scene by
exhibiting his work here
and as a member of the
Brighton Fine Arts Sub-
Committee. It seems that
he got on very well with
Henry Roberts, Chief
Librarian and Curator
of Brighton Museum.
Shortly after Goff’s death
in Switzerland in 1922,
memorial exhibitions were
held at Brighton Museum,
Hove Public Library, and the Fine Art Society in
London. Brighton & Hove Museums acquired
the entire contents of this studio, a collection
which gives a remarkable insight into the work
and methods of an etcher in the late 19th and
early 20th century.
This image shows an etching from 1912 of
Wick Studio and Holland Road. It is a lovingly
composed view of a place that was clearly very
important to him. The mother and child in the
foreground may be significant: Goff’s first wife
Beatrice and their young son Francis died a few
years after they had moved to Hove. Goff also
included a similar view of his studio in miniature
as part of a large index plate for a catalogue of his
work in 1898.
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