Born in 1918, Gould was the son of Rupert Gould, the restorer of John Harrison’s chronometers, and Muriel Estall. Gould was educated at Kingswood House preparatory school, near Epsom, and then at Westminster School. After leaving school he studied at the Courtauld Institute. During the Second World War he served as Pilot Officer Gould in R.A.F. Intelligence, first in Egypt from 1941 to 1943 and then in Normandy, France. In early 1945 he was transferred to the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program under the Civil Affairs and Military Government Sections of the Allied armies, which was established in 1943 to help protect cultural property in war areas during and after World War II. The group of approximately 400 service members and civilians, known commonly as the "Monuments Men", worked with military forces to safeguard historic and cultural monuments from war damage, and as the conflict came to a close, to find and return works of art and other items of cultural importance that had been stolen by the Nazis or hidden for safekeeping. After the war, he joined the National Gallery staff in 1946 and worked there until his retirement in 1987. He was Keeper and Deputy Director for the last five years of his tenure. He was a prolific author, publishing many books and articles during his career. In 1970, Gould established that the National Gallery's Portrait of Pope Julius II was the prime version by Raphael and not a copy, as had previously been thought. He was also responsible for a new attribution of a work to Michelangelo. In his last years Gould lived with his younger sister Jocelyne Stacey in the village of Thorncombe, Dorset. He developed a brain tumour and, after a short illness, died on 7 April 1994. Gould never married and was survived by Jocelyne. A collection of Gould's large-format black-and-white photographs of Islamic architecture in Cairo, taken during World War II, is in the RIBA library. Gould was portrayed during his childhood in the 2000 Channel 4television drama about Harrison's chronometers, Longitude. He was played by child actor Joe Williams.
Partial bibliography
The Sixteenth Century Venetian School 1959
The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools 1962
The last two were revised and combined as: The Sixteenth Century Italian Schools 1975
