author
Walter Goodman
1838–1912
A Victorian painter, illustrator, and writer, he brought an artist’s eye to everything he did—from portraits and theatrical scenes to lively travel writing. His best-known book grew out of years spent in Cuba and offers a vivid, firsthand glimpse of 19th-century life there.
1 Audiobook
The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba
by Walter Goodman
About the author
Born in London in 1838, Walter Goodman built a career that crossed painting, illustration, and writing. He trained in art from a young age, studying under J. M. Leigh and at the Royal Academy schools, and he went on to exhibit his work while also taking on illustration and stage design.
Goodman is especially remembered for the years he spent in Cuba in the 1860s. Those experiences later became The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba (1873), a travel memoir that helped give readers in Britain a colorful, observant account of everyday life on the island. His life and work moved between the studio and the wider world, which gives his writing an unusually direct, lived-in feel.
He continued working as an artist and author into later life and died in 1912. Today he is often noted as a versatile Victorian figure whose paintings and prose both show a strong eye for character, setting, and detail.