Barbara Eckhardt-Goodwin, Lyme Artist, Dies at 92

Barbara Eckhardt-Goodwin, artist, died Wednesday, December 4, at age 92.  She leaves her daughter, Georgiana Goodwin of Lyme, and granddaughter, Sophia Harvey of New York City.  She was predeceased by her husband, Harold Goodwin.

Born in Philadelphia on February 3, 1921, to Minette Robb Eckhardt and George Waldvogel Eckhardt, Barbara studied at the Art Students League in New York City, where she met and married fellow artist Harold Goodwin and dedicated her life to painting.  A sensitive and serious artist, her work has been collected internationally, appeared as murals, and reproduced on book jackets.  Her painting “November Water,” a landscape depicting Lyme’s Eightmile River, is part of the Florence Griswold Museum’s permanent collection.

Barbara began her career in New York and then moved to Montreal where, during the war, she painted and showed at the Montreal Museum of Art.  Post-war she and Harold returned to New York City, painting and running a portrait business.  When their daughter, Georgiana, was four, they purchased a home on Grassy Hill Road in Lyme from Impressionist painter Frank Vincent DuMond.

Barbara lived and worked from her home on Grassy Hill for more than 50 years. Harold painted there as well, also working as an artist/illustrator, serving as the first chairman of the board of the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, and teaching drawing and History of Art. Harold passed away in 2001.

Last summer, after opening her studio for the Lyme Library’s Artists’ Studio Tour, part of the library’s centennial celebration, Barbara sold her Grassy Hill house and moved to her daughter’s house on Joshuatown Road, where she continued to paint daily until falling ill in late November.

Barbara died in the hospice unit at Middlesex Hospital.  There will be no public service but a celebration of her life and work will be held at the Florence Griswold Museum’s Marshfield House on December 28 from 3-5 p.m.

In her essay “A Long Look Back”, published in the Fall 2013 edition of the Florence Griswold Museum’s Ledger, Barbara wrote, “I honor the long, ever-changing tradition of Realism.  I must trust my thoughts about what I see.  And what I see is color.  As Proust said, we age upon the rising stilts of our past – until we fall.  So far, so good.”