Goodridge Roberts

William Goodridge Roberts CM RCA (1904–1974) was a Canadian painter known for his landscape paintings, still lifes, nudes and interiors. He was also a teacher.

Goodridge Roberts was the son of poet and novelist George Edward Theodore Goodridge Roberts and Frances Seymour Allen. Roberts was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1904 while his parents were on holiday from their New Brunswick home.

Roberts studied at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal and at the Art Students League of New York with John Sloan, Boardman Robertson and Max Weber (1926–1928).[1] From 1933 to 1936 was the resident artist at Queen's University. In 1938 Roberts joined the Eastern Group of Painters, and in 1939 he exhibited at the New York World's Fair. He taught at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1940 to 1952. During the period from 1943 to 1945 he was an Official War Artist for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

In 1952, works by Roberts along with those of Emily Carr, David Milne and Alfred Pellan represented Canada at the Venice Biennale.[2]

A scholarship was awarded (in 1953) by the Canadian government to allow Roberts to study painting in France. Then in 1959 he won the Glaxebrook award at the National Gallery of Canada for a landscape painting. This year (1959) until 1960 Roberts was the resident artist at the University of New Brunswick. In 1964, he won the A. J. Casson Award, the annual "Open Water" competition organized by the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (CSPWC). In 1969, he was a recipient of the Order of Canada and was given a traveling retrospective exhibition by the National Gallery of Canada, an unusual honour for a living artist at the time.[3]

He was made a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.[4] He was also a member of the Canadian Group of Painters.

Following his death after a lengthy illness, his work was the subject of several museum solo exhibitions with publications, including a touring retrospective in 1998.