"[1][note 1] Employing, as one critic wrote, an "exquisitely meticulous realism,"[2] he might take a full year to complete work on a single picture.

[1][4] Goeller's father and grandfather were structural engineers who ran a successful iron and steel fabricating plant in Newark, New Jersey.

[5] Upon graduating from high school Goeller studied mathematics, civil engineering, and architecture first at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and later at Cornell University.

[1][7] After his return to the United States Goeller joined the young American artists associated with the Daniel Gallery located on Madison Avenue in New York.

One remarked on the high quality of the work and pointed out that the cloth "drapes itself cunningly,"[13] another noted his "meticulous technique" and "vibrating color,"[14] and a third saw in it a tendency toward Neues Sachlichkeit.

Called "Forty-six Painters and Sculptors Under Thirty-One Years of Age," it contained an international mix of art by younger artists, including many whose careers would later flourish.

Calling it "sumptuous" and "ravishing," he said its virtuosity made it comparable to the work of early-Renaissance goldsmiths and concluded: "Here, once more, in this expert solution of a painter's problem, the centuries become but as a day.

"[17] In a paper read at the College Art Association meeting in 1931 Alfred H. Barr cited Goeller as one of a group of young Americans whom he called "New Objectivists.

[20][note 9] Reviewing a group exhibition at the Daniel Gallery in 1931, a critic referred to Goeller and the show's other artists as practitioners of "pure painting."

He praised the still lifes for his outstanding use of color and the remarkable fabric textures he was able to achieve, but felt the figure studies were not maturely realized and the landscapes overly flat.

[25][note 10] Having achieved critical recognition for his still lifes in the early 1930s, Goeller painted a larger number of landscapes during the middle and late years of the decade.

[1][64] During World War II he was employed in the graphic art department of Fleetwings, a firm that made airplanes and aircraft components, located in Bristol, Pennsylvania.

[1][note 16] Goeller's wartime contribution also included evening classes he taught at Drexel Institute to help prepare for young people for factory work.