Thomas Cooper Gotch
Thomas Cooper Gotch ( born December 10, 1854 in Kettering, Northamptonshire, † May 1, 1931 in Newlyn, Cornwall ) was a British painter of the late Impressionism, Symbolism, and later of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He is also an important representative of the Newlyn School, an artists' colony in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Life and work
Thomas Cooper Gotch came from a wealthy, unconventional family from the Middle English Kettering north of London, and was the fourth son of Thomas Henry Gotch. His older brother John Alfred Gotch was later architect and wrote several works on architecture. After visiting the Kettering Grammar School Thomas Cooper Gotch first worked in the shoe shop of his father. In 1876, he left his father's company to take up his art studies at the Heatherley 's Art School. In 1877 he attended the Royal Academy for Fine Arts in Antwerp and enrolled in 1878 at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he met Henry Scott Tuke, with whom he entertained a lifelong friendship later.
At the Slade School Gotch had in 1879 also met his future wife, Caroline Burland Yates ( 1854-1945 ). At her instigation both attended along with Henry Scott Tuke the fishing village of Newlyn in Cornwall. 1881 returned Gotch and Yates back to Newlyn to be married in the local St Peter 's Church. Subsequently, the two continued their art studies in Paris at the Académie Julian, where Gotch was informed by Jean Paul Laurens. 1882 arrived in Paris daughter Phyllis Marian Gotch on the world. Parents and children traveled to Australia and relative residing in Melbourne there. Upon her return to England, Gotch involved in the resistance against the conservative understanding of art at the Royal Academy of Arts in 1885 and founded together with John Singer Sargent, Stanhope Forbes, Frank Bramley and others the New English Art Club.
1887 could be the young family down in Newlyn, where Walter Langley and Samuel John Birch an artists' colony, which had been founded in Newlyn School. There Gotch got back to Henry Scott Tuke and Stanhope Forbes, who had also joined this group of painters. Before he helped place to set up the Newlyn Art Gallery, where the works of the artists' colony should be kept and exhibited, and the Newlyn Industrial Classes, where young people could learn crafts from the area. Gotch founded in 1887 the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists, which he later 1913-1928 board as president. During this time, Gotch operation as many painters of the Newlyn School plein air painting and created remarkable oil paintings and watercolors in the style of realism and impressionism late.
1891 Gotch traveled with his wife to Florence and stayed there through the winter until the spring of 1892. This stay in the capital of the Renaissance brought about a radical change in his style of painting, which is now oriented to the Pre-Raphaelites and had influences of symbolism and romanticism. First came his major change of subject matter and style of painting rejection. Only after The Times had his painting The Child Enthroned highlighted as an attraction to the Royal Academy show of 1894, his work has received wide recognition. Together with Alleluia from 1896 it is today one of the most outstanding works of art of the Victorian era. The painter was used for both painting his daughter Phyllis as a model.
Because of its distinctive style - symbolic figures and decorative patterns in static arrangement of the early Renaissance - Thomas Cooper Gotch has now become one of the most famous artists of his time and many renowned galleries bought his works. Already in 1911 there was a retrospective of his previous oeuvre in Newcastle. Gotch made next to numerous landscape paintings and book illustrations, but scored his income primarily through portraiture. As modern was its preferred representation of single or multiple young girls, often stood for the Friends of daughter Phyllis model, so that the house of the painter became a magnet around. Phyllis later worked as a writer and singer. In the 20s and 30s to Gotch turned more and more to the realism.
Thomas Cooper Gotch died in 1931 and was buried in his hometown of Newlyn. In the same year an exhibition was held in his birthplace of Kettering, in his life's work was appreciated. Even today there is a large part of his works in the Alfred East Gallery in Kettering. Most of his other works are still available and are located in England. A presentation of his work in bound form has not yet been published, only the Alfred East Gallery sells a 32-page Geheft about the artist. Manuscripts to his life and works are preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. In 2001, at the Royal Cornwall Museum in Truro issuing TC Gotch: The Last of the Pre- Raphaelites instead.