Gaspé Coast, 1953 (circa)

In Joan Roberts’ book about her life with Goodridge, she says that when Dr. Max Stern relocated Dominion Gallery from Saint Catherine St. up to the Sherbrooke Street location in 1950 his inaugural exhibition was a solo show of Goodridge Roberts paintings. Joan notes that the exposure with Dominion and the quality of Roberts’ paintings led to his participation in the Venice Biennale in 1952, his selection to exhibit in the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh in 1955, as well as his inclusion in the lV Centennial of Valencia, Spain, in the same year. Additionally, in 1958, his works were exhibited at the Inter-American Biennial of painting in Mexico as well as the Brussels World’s Fair. [2]

In 1952 the Royal Canadian Air Force purchased one of his paintings for presentation to Queen Elizabeth.

In summary, Goodridge Roberts was one of the most honoured figurative artists of his day.

Joan wrote, “Goodridge the man, as I perceived him, was inseparable from Goodridge Roberts the artist. In his work, he maintained an almost symbiotic relationship with his subject. He always had an intensely close interaction with whatever he saw and this meant that he never worked on a landscape unless he could actually see it” [2]

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Footnotes: 

[1] Joan Roberts, Joan & Goodridge: My Life with Goodridge Roberts (Montreal: Véhicule Press, 2009), 105.

[2] Ibid., 73.