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The Artists

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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