Robert Charles Goff
Irish, 1837–1922
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Robert Charles Goff was a printmaker and painter who specialised in topographical scenes. As an etcher he was strongly influenced by the work of James McNeill Whistler.
Born in Ireland, he obtained a commission in the 50th Queen's Own Regiment just before his eighteenth birthday. He fought in the Crimean War and became adjutant of his regiment before going to Ceylon and then transferring to the 15th Foot then the Coldstream Guards.
Having achieved the rank of colonel, he retired from the Coldstream Guards in 1878 to concentrate on his art work, having learned etching from a fellow officer. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1887.
In 1877 he married Beatrice Teresa Testaferrata-Abela, daughter of Baron Testaferrata-Abela of Malta and had a son, Francis who died in 1891. His wife also died and in 1899 he remarried The Hon Clarissa Catherine de Hochepied-Larpent, daughter of Arthur de Hochepied Larpent, 8th Baron de Hochepied, and thus became brother-in-law of his friends Philip Napier Miles and George Percy Jacomb-Hood.
Goff lived in London and Brighton but travelled extensively. He moved in the 1890s to a villa overlooking Florence and he and his second wife wrote about the area. He then moved during the First World War to Villa Valerie, Bellaria, La Tour-de-Peilz, Switzerland where he died in 1922.