Design and Art Australia Online

painter and teacher, was born at Birmingham, England, son of Thomas Hall of Olton, near Bradford, Yorkshire. Arthur studied under T.R. Abbett and E.R. Taylor at the Birmingham School of Art and at the South Kensington Art Schools, London, where he was a gold medallist. Further studies were made in Paris and Antwerp. Woodward qualified as an art teacher and was principal of the Smallheath Branch of the Birmingham School of Art before he migrated to Victoria in 1889 for health reasons, planning to establish an academy of art and music with his friend and associate W.G. Laver. These plans were abandoned when Laver accepted an appointment as first Professor of Music at the University of Melbourne. Woodward was briefly Art Director of the Sale School of Mines; his marriage to Emma Jane Stokes at Sale evidently occurred at this time. In 1894 he was appointed Head of the School of Art and Design at the Bendigo School of Mines, a post he occupied until he retired in 1921.

Woodward mainly painted oils, usually portraits and genre subjects, and worked in a style that generally reflects English painting of the period. Terry Ingram has written about his watercolours, noting his competency as a painter and his unusual talent for capturing curious perspectives. He frequently painted portraits of himself as if seen from a birds-eye view, e.g. The Artist Smoking and Reading 'The Studio’ , sold by Deutscher Fine Art in October-November 1983 for $450. It shows a portion of the artist’s stomach, his thumb and finger holding a pipe, a magazine resting on his lap, his shoe, and a section of the sitting room around him.

His greatest achievement was as a teacher. He was conversant with the European art-scene and introduced methods and syllabi based on it, including outdoor art classes and life drawing so his students might proceed directly to French academies – as several did. He was also strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and, at an early date, introduced the teaching of crafts to the School. Well-known artists who studied under him at Bendigo include Inez Abbott, George H. Allen, Tom Bone, Ola Cohn , Madge Freeman , Agnes Goodsir , Norman Penrose, Louise Riggall , Elma Roach, Mary Shiress and John Walker. Woodward had a considerable influence upon teaching methods, standards and art training in Victorian technical schools and his advice on art education was widely sought. In 1899 he was appointed Examiner in Drawing at the Victorian Matriculation Examination; in 1906 he conducted vocational art schools in Sydney and Melbourne.

Woodward was involved with the formation of the Bendigo Art Society in 1920 and was closely associated with the development of the Bendigo Art Gallery, which in 1940 named a special art award the A.T. Woodward Commemoration Prize in his honour. He lectured on art history and art appreciation locally, at the National Gallery of Victoria and, according to Ingram, on Melbourne radio. In 1937 he was awarded the King’s Commemorative Medal for services to art in Australia. A commemorative exhibition of his work was held at the Bendigo Art Gallery in 1939. He epitomised the popular nineteenth century conception of the artist in many ways but had unusually diverse talents and interests. He was gifted musically and published a book of verse, From a Studio Window (1899). He was also interested in minerals and palaeontology, amassing an important fossil collection, making significant discoveries in the field and having a fossil, Atopograptus woodwardi , named after him.

Woodward died on 12 February 1943 and is buried in the Church of England section of the Bendigo General Cemetery. His painting Summer Sunshine 1929 is held by the National Gallery of Victoria.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011