Thomas Gooch (1750 – 1802) was an English artist who also specialised in painting animals, particularly dog and horse portraiture. No portraits of the artist survive.

Life and work

Thomas Gooch was born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

circa 1750 where he lived for most of his life; he died at

Lyndhurst, Hampshire Lyndhurst is a large village and civil parish situated in the New Forest National Park in Hampshire, England. Serving as the administrative capital of the New Forest, it is a popular tourist attraction, with many independent shops, art gallerie ...

in 1802. Details on his family life are scant. More famous for his work depicting animals, Gooch did also paint images of those that owned the horses and dogs he more readily depicted. He famously carried out a study of the life of a racehorse as a set of six images, depicting the animal's misuse after a life of racing as a

thoroughbred The Thoroughbred is a horse breed best known for its use in horse racing. Although the word ''thoroughbred'' is sometimes used to refer to any breed of purebred horse, it technically refers only to the Thoroughbred breed. Thoroughbreds are c ...

. The Life and Death of a Racehorse, completed in 1792 was a popular work and reproduced as

aquatint Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used h ...

prints and often accompanied with a thought-provoking text on animal cruelty. Gooch was an artist who was popular with the landed gentry and prolific, exhibiting many times (76 paintings submitted) at the

Royal Academy The Royal Academy of Arts (RA) is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly in London. Founded in 1768, it has a unique position as an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects. Its pur ...

References

External links

Web Gallery of Art, Thomas Gooch
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gooch, Thomas 18th-century English painters English male painters 19th-century English painters 1750 births 1802 deaths 19th-century English male artists 18th-century English male artists