Object Type: Painting

Medium and Support: oil on linen

Credit Line: Florence Griswold Museum; Alice Talcott Enders Purchase Fund

Accession Number: 2008.1

In "November Water," Barbara Eckhardt Goodwin deploys vivid patches of color—blue, purple, and orange—to suggest a shady river with fiery autumn leaves and rocks submerged below its clear, swiftly-flowing surface. The artist usually depicts local subjects, such as the Eight Mile River (seen in "November Water") or the garden and interior of her home on Grassy Hill Road. Her sensitive observations of daily life and changing seasons become the means through which she explores the visual possibilities of color. Her complex blending and layering of tones to achieve unusual effects reflects Eckhardt Goodwin’s admiration of Italian Renaissance painters, who have inspired her throughout her sixty-five year career. She describes herself as “single-minded” in her commitment to art; as a young woman, she defied her parents’ wish that she attend Smith College or Bryn Mawr and instead went to New York to study at the Art Students League. She visited museums there and in Europe, where she was particularly intrigued by the paintings of Titian. She has called his use of color “profound” and “mysterious”—qualities that describe equally her own use of color. Her determination to experiment with color and form has been tested most recently in a series of gutsy nudes, for which she used herself as the model.