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Andrew Wilton, the great Turner scholar, author and first curator of the Turner Gallery at the Tate Britain, was the guest opener of ths current Albert Goodwin retrospective at the gallery. During his stimulating talk he made reference to this Turneresque view of Canterbury: "Every now and then you come across landscapes which appear to be pure topography, but which suddenly evaporate into mist or some kind of half obsure indistinction, as perhaps the middle distance or twilight is decending, or there is a gully below a building with a gorge, perhaps just a street, but the light coming down the street - there are some views of Canterbury where the cathedral is perched above an illuminated street. That is a compositional trick which he borrowed from Turner, which was one that Turner used in order to bring the eye from the foreground, from the picture plane into the far distance. This was another of the ways in which Goodwin was constantly quite self-consciously constructing his pictures to make physical points that the viewer could enter in to and understand, and these are aesthetic points which are quite apart from the representational narrative points which he also makes. His art is full of references which are both aesthetic and literal and physical. That is one of the reasons why he is such an interesting figure."
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