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John
Charles Goodchild (1898-1980)
When
John Goodchild and his family migrated to Australia in 1913 he was
forced to leave the Strand School in London, to which he had won
a scholarship. Once in Australia, he worked in an Adelaide bakery
but soon changed to sign writing. The repetitiveness of the job
led him to enlist for the First World War.
During
military training his aptitude for drawing was noticed and he was
given the unpleasant task of illustrating the effects of venereal
disease on male and female genitalia. During the time he spent in
Le Havre, France, he also contributed drawings to the Australian
field paper The Digger. At the conclusion of the war, Australia
House commissioned him to produce 36 pen drawings of Australian
cemeteries in France, which were published in 1921 under the title,
Where Diggers Rest.
On
his return to Adelaide he enrolled, with the support of the Returned
Soldiers Scheme, at the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts
before returning once again to England to study printing at the
London School of Arts and Crafts. Goodchild returned to Australia
in 1926 to marry Doreen Rowley, also an artist, and together they
went to live in England for three years, where he worked at the
Strand School, this time as a teacher.
Goodchild
joined the board of trustees of the newly created National Gallery
of Australia in 1940.
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