Richard Labarre Goodwin was born in Albany, New York and studied with his father, Edwin Weyburn, a portraitist and miniaturist. R.L. Goodwin worked for twenty five years as a traveling portraitist, stopping in Syracuse, New York in the 1880's, in Washington, D.C. in the 1890's, in Chicago, Illinois from 1893 to 1900, in Colorado Springs, Colorado from 1900 to 1902, and in Portland, Oregon from 1906 to 1908 before returning to Rochester, New York in 1908. Goodwin exhibited at the Lewis and Clark Centennial in Portland, Oregon in 1905. His work is represented in the collections of Stanford University and the Smithsonian Institution. Goodwin is best known for his still lifes of fish and game.