Stephen Frederick Gooden CBE, RA, Royal Engineers (born Tulse Hill, London, 9 October 1892, died Chesham Bois, Buckinghamshire 21 September 1955) was an English artist, engraver, illustrator and designer of banknotes. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1933[Hopkinson, M. (1999). No day without a line. The History of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers 1880–1999. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum.] and a Fellow of the Royal Academy in 1946.
Early life
Gooden was the son of a picture dealer, Stephen Thomas Gooden (1856-1909), who joined Frederick W. Fox to create the company Gooden and Fox. S.F. Gooden was educated at
Rugby School and studied at the Slade School of Fine Art from 1909 to 1913. He served in the
Royal Engineers during World War I.
[Peppin, B. & Micklethwait, L. (1983). Dictionary of British Book Illustrators. The Twentieth Century. London: John Murray.]
Work
Gooden was best known as an
engraving, mostly on copper. His designs have been described as finely engraved, witty and inventive.
[Horne, A. (1994). The Dictionary of 20th Century British Book Illustrators. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Antique Collectors’ Club.] He was associated with the
Nonesuch Press in its early years for which he provided decorations and title pages, and he illustrated fine editions of the King James Bible (1924) and the odes of
Anacreon (1923). He designed banknotes for the Bank of England, but only one was issued,
and for several other countries. He also designed and engraved many pictorial and armorial
including designs for Princess Elizabeth, Stephen Courtauld and several others.
[ Gooden's design of St George and the dragon on the bookplate for the Royal Library at Windsor Castle was used as the basis for the design of the reverse of the George Medal, for which he was awarded the CBE.
]
Gooden's work can be found in the collections of the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, USA.
Personal life
In 1925 he married the Irish poet Mona Steele Price (1894–1958) for whom he illustrated an anthology of poems that she selected about cats.[Gooden, M. (1946). The Poet's Cat. London: George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.] They had no children.
Bibliography
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Campbell Dodgson (1944). An Iconography of the Engravings of Stephen Gooden. London: Elkin Matthews.
External links
