Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Goulding, Frederick
GOULDING, FREDERICK (1842–1909), master printer of copper plates, was born at Holloway Road, Islington, on 7 Oct. 1842. His father, John Fry Goulding, foreman printer to Messrs. Day & Son, was married in 1833 to Elizabeth Rogers, who belonged to an old stock of Spitalfields weavers, and his grandfather, John Golding, also a copper-plate printer, was apprenticed in 1779 to a still earlier William Golding, a copper-plate printer of St. Botolph, Bishopsgate. In 1854 Frederick Goulding was sent to a day school conducted at the National Hall, Holborn, by William Lovett [q. v.], a well-known Chartist. On 24 Jan. 1857 he was apprenticed to Messrs. Day & Son, 6 Gate Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, originally a firm of lithographic printers, but then concerned largely with the printing of engravings, to which branch of their business Goulding was attached. In his spare time through 1858 and 1859 he studied at the schools of art in Wilmington Square, Clerkenwell, and Castle Street, Long Acre, also attending lectures at the Royal Academy Schools. In 1859 he acted as 'devil' to James MacNeill Whistler [q. v. Suppl. II] in the printing of some of his etchings, and in the same year assisted his father in printing a series of etchings by Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort. At the Great Exhibition of 1862 he gave a daily demonstration of copper-plate printing for Messrs. Day & Son, from May till November, and began there the personal friendship with Sir Francis Seymour Haden [q. v. Suppl. II] which lasted till the end of his life.
By this time Goulding was a master of the 'art and mystery' of his craft, and began to use his spare time in the evenings and on Saturdays by working for private clients at his own residence, Kingston House, 53 Shepherd's Bush Road. Among those for whom he printed were Seymour Haden, Legros, Whistler, and Samuel Palmer. In 1881 he felt justified in embarking upon a printing business of his own, and built a studio, largely extended later, in the garden at the back of Kingston House. Among artists whose etchings he printed were Frank Short, Strang, Pennell, Rodin, Holroyd, Rajon and R. W. Macbeth; in fact few etchers or engravers did not claim Goulding's assistance. In 'About Etching' (1879) Haden described Goulding as 'the best printer of etchings in England just now.' From 1876 till 1882 he acted as assistant to Alphonse Legros [q. v. Suppl. II] in an etching class held weekly at the National Art Training School, now the Royal College of Art, and from 1882 to 1891, when he was succeeded by Sir Frank Short, was entirely responsible for the conduct of the class. From 1876 to 1879 he also assisted Legros in an etching class held at the Slade School. On 7 Feb. 1890, at a full meeting of the council of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, he was unanimously elected the first master printer to the society.
In Goulding's case the craft of plate printing depended on something more than mere handicraft. He combined with remarkable dexterity of workmanship a singular understan^g of each artist's aim, and so played no small part in the revival of etching in the nineteenth century. For his amusement and instruction he produced a few etchings of his own; their organic weakness of line is concealed by masterly printing.
He died, after five years' continuous ill-health, on 5 March 1909, and was buried in Kensal Green cemetery. On 16 Dec. 1865 he married Melanie Marie Alexandrine Piednue, and had three sons and a daughter (now Mrs. Pickford). A portrait in oils by Mr. Alfred Hartley, R.E., belongs to his daughter ; there is also a dry-point etching by Mr. W. Strang, A.R.A., and a photo-engraving by Mr. Emery Walker from a photograph taken by Sir Frank Short.
[Frederick Goulding, Master Printer of Copper Plates, by the present writer, 1910, based on private information and on memoranda left by Goulding. The volume contains the full text of a lecture on the theory and practice of his craft delivered by Goulding to the Art Workers' Guild in 1904.]