Chichester artist and conservationist to be honoured with blue plaque

David, who died at the age of 96 in 2013, was hugely influential in the cultural life of the city, most notably the Festival Theatre, the old Chichester Festivities and the Oxmarket. He was also a major artist in his own right and a highly successful businessman. The plaque, a City Council award, will be presented at the Chichester City Council Civic Awards presentation evening on Tuesday, February 7. Chichester City Council’s criteria for consideration for Blue Plaques is to “commemorate famous people or events connected with Chichester buildings.” After going through Chichester District Council’s planning system, the blue plaque will be placed on David’s former home in Franklin Place at a date to be confirmed, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of the Chichester Society which he founded.

His daughter Julia Goodman is delighted at the recognition: “I do feel that I'm having a little bit of a chat with him up there saying ‘There you are, darling, you are being recognised. You got all that you wanted but you just had to die first! It so often on the way with artists! Having a plaque on his house makes such a difference…

“When he first came down from London and married mum and started to live in Sussex he started to teach at the art school which is now Bill’s in North Street. I remember going up there as a child and smelling the turpentine and there would be nude ladies being painted! He was a senior artist there. He also taught at the Prebendal and he also tried to set up an arts centre in Chichester just after the big 1953 exhibition. He realised that Chichester had a lots of things that they could bring together in terms of art and he wanted to have a centre for that. Sadly it didn't come off for all sorts of reasons but I know he was very sad about that so then he started his own company, the David Paul Gallery, and he also had the Design Group. They did a lot of the big logos for companies and he did the Oxmarket logo and he did the Minerva head for the Minerva. It was all graphic design. And he also had a frame-making business. My father was very reluctant to push himself as an artist but he loved impressionism and he had this wonderful ability to paint wonderful landscapes that always had a road going off into the distance. He always wanted to have hope going forward, that there was never an end. Some of his greatest paintings are landscapes. He did a lot of work in Italy and France and here, and until you see the body of his work you just don't realise what an amazing artist he was. He was also a very entrepreneurial man and would always be diverted into other things. He had three daughters, and he knew you that he couldn't just make his living from art.”

As for the CFT: “He started the friends group and went around raising money for the new theatre. He was then on the board with Laurence Olivier and was honorary art adviser to the theatre.”

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