Richard Godfrey,art historian; Guardian obit
Hyfler/Rosner
Don't miss the last line of the obit.
Richard Godfrey
(Filed: 07/02/2003)
Richard Godfrey, who has died aged 57, was an authority on the history
of printmaking in Britain; his profound knowledge of caricature was
distilled in the catalogue of an exhibition at the Tate Britain which he
organised in 2001 on the greatest exponent of that art, James Gillray.
Godfrey was a delightful companion, funny and erudite, with a natural
timing and intonation that owed something to his literary heroes, John
Aubrey, Dickens and Wodehouse. In many ways he would have been better suited
to the milieux of coffee-house or tavern.
He delighted in absurdity, and loved to recall the moment when, late
into the convivial aftermath of one of his exhibition openings in America,
the director of the host museum unexpectedly disappeared under the table.
Godfrey was thoughtful and generous, often arriving at a friend's house with
an appropriate print.
Above all he was generous with his knowledge and enthusiasm. He well
knew that he had neither the time nor the temperament to execute all his
scholarly plans, and turned over ideas, schemes, and endless notes, to be
used by those who would fulfil them. Numerous books and articles began by
acknowledging this, not a few of them in the journal Print Quarterly, of
which he was a founding board member.
Richard Timothy Godfrey, known in the family as Tim, was born on July
2 1945 at Portland, Dorset, where his father was then curate; a
clergyman-scholar, he published books on the Church in Anglo-Saxon England
and on the Fourth Crusade.
Godfrey's memories of his schooldays at Rossall School centred mostly
on incidents at cricket, a game he loved unashamedly, being able rapidly to
recount the means by which successive generations of English batsmen had
succumbed to Australian fast bowlers. To improve the modest count of
examinations passed, he was sent to Cranborne Chase, the girls' school near
his father's parish.
After a foundation year at Salisbury Art School, Godfrey went on to
Chelsea to study painting and Art History. His education in draughtsmanship,
painting, sculpture and printmaking informed his future teaching and
connoisseurship, and he was never happier than when discussing in a studio
or over a drink the niceties of inking and wiping plates, the texture of
paper, and how particular effects were achieved. He always had a refresher
with a printmaker friend when preparing an exhibition.
He became a lecturer, mainly at Colchester, and at the summer schools
of two American universities. His interest in prints was stimulated by finds
that could be made for a shilling or two in George Suckling's shop at Cecil
Court, or at Craddock and Barnard opposite the British Museum. His first
book, Printmaking in Britain, A General History from its Beginnings to the
Present Day (1978), is still the best introduction to the subject.
Shortly after this the Yale Center for British Art opened at New
Haven, funded by Paul Mellon, and Godfrey took up a fellowship in 1979. The
Yale Center has been an important stimulus to the revival of interest in
British art. One of its early publications was Painters and Engraving, The
Reproductive Print from Hogarth to Wilkie, written by Godfrey and his
co-fellow David Alexander.
In America Godfrey was able to discover for himself several rich
caricature collections, including that formerly held at Windsor. They were a
catalyst for his next endeavour, an exhibition of Caricature from 1620 to
the Present (1984) which was shown at the Victoria & Albert Museum and
travelled to Yale, Washington and Ottawa.
In 1984 Godfrey accepted a job as Sotheby's specialist in old master
prints, which gave him a regular income. He dispersed some notable
collections, but was impatient with corporate life and disdained what bored
him, dismissing a large number of bad reproductive engravings in a German
castle as: "A roomful of prints. £100."
What he did enjoy was the protective loyalty of his colleagues, the
chance to travel, when he could visit picture galleries between valuations,
and the presence under one roof of works of art in many media. He was often
able to identify these works and their sources when their own specialists
were stumped; a red-chalk portrait was, he announced, by Watteau of his
master Audran, and had been engraved by the Comte de Caylus.
His last two projects were his most satisfying pieces of scholarship;
they encapsulated a lifetime of looking and thinking in studies of two of
his favourite artist-printmakers. Wenceslaus Hollar: A Bohemian Artist in
England (1994) was shown at Yale, and James Gillray: The Art of Caricature
(2001) at the Tate Britain.
For both exhibitions he wrote fine catalogues, full of expository wit.
In the second his wide knowledge of the art of many periods was disposed to
full effect, for Gillray also knew the art of past and present well and
plundered it to enhance the devastating effects of his satire.
In the last two years, Godfrey had become ill and reclusive, and
although his telephone calls had picked up much of their old pace and verve
recently, there was a valedictory tone to them.
Although vigorously heterosexual, he never married.
Hyfler/Rosner
Correcting the header. From the Telegraph.