A traditionalist, Ray Edward Goodbred stayed true to his academic training at the Art Students League in New York. In compellingly realistic portraits he captured his sitters’ personalities, while his still lifes convincingly displayed diverse collections of objects. In addition he painted classical style nudes and interiors with complex spatial dynamics. He painted with oils, and was particularly facile with pastel.
Goodbred was born in Brooklyn, New York. For three years, 1948 to 1951, he took classes at the Art Students League under Robert Brackman, a noted portraitist. In 1952 Goodbred studied with Ogden Pleissner at the National Academy of School of Fine Art in New York. From 1953 to 1956 he was a student at the New York University School of Education. He taught occasionally at the League, and established the Ray E. Goodbred Memorial Scholarship Fund, in memory of Rose Raymond Goodbred and Edward Stone Goodbred, his parents.
Prior to 1970 Goodbred moved to Charleston, South Carolina, and continued to teach both privately and at the Hastie School of Art at the Gibbes Art Gallery (now the Gibbes Museum of Art). He painted the portraits of many prominent individuals as well as four presidents of The Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina: Army General Mark W. Clark, Army Major General James W. Duckett, Army General Charles P. Summerall, and Air Force Lieutenant General Claudius E. Watts III.