Thomas Cooper Gotch

Thomas Cooper Gotch or TC Gotch (Dec 10, 1854 - May 1, 1931) was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter and book illustrator, and brother of John Alfred Gotch, the architect

Gotch studied art in London and Antwerp before he married and studied in Paris with his wife, Caroline, a fellow artist Returning to Britain, they settled into the Newlyn art colony in Cornwall He first made paintings of natural, pastoral settings before immersing himself in the romantic, Pre-Raphaelite romantic style for which he is best known His daughter was often a model for the colourful depictions of young girls

His works have been exhibited at the Royal Academy, Royal College of Art and the Paris Salon

Thomas Gotch was born in 1854 at No 13 in Lower Street at Kettering It came from a middle class family to which some scholars and some artists belonged His father was Thomas Henry Gotch (born in 1805), a shoe manufacturer and his mother was Mary Ann Gotch (born in 1817 in London Ivy Lane), married St Savior Southwark in 1847 Thomas Cooper Gotch was sent to study at Then went to study in Antwerp and Paris under Jean-Paul Laurens's teaching, and then, between 1878 and 1880, studied at the Slade School of Fine Art in London In 1881, at the age of 26, after a long engagement, he married his companion of art studios Caroline Burland Yates (1854-1945)

After several trips to the world, he approached the breakthrough movements with the views of the Royal Academy of Arts and became a founding member of the New English Art Club

In 1881 he married fellow art student Caroline Burland Yates (1854-1945) at Newlyn's St Peter’s Church His daughter, Phyllis Marian Gotch was sometimes a model for her father[nb 2] After completing his studies, Gotch travelled to Australia in 1883 Gotch and his wife settled in Newlyn, Cornwall in 1887 The couple and their daughter were key participants in the Newlyn art colony

Around 1887, Gotch and his wife settled in the colony of Newlyn schoolchildren in Cornwall, though they had already visited it in 1880 He founded the Newlyn Industrial Classes where local youth could learn the arts and crafts He also helped set up the Newlyn Art Gallery, which was a member of the committee for life In 1887 he founded the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists, where he was president from 1913 to 1928 Among his friends at Newlyn were artists Stanhope Forbes and Albert Chevallier Tayler

In addition to his time spent in France and Belgium while studying art, Gotch also travelled to Austria, Australia, South Africa, Italy and Denmark

Thomas Cooper Gotch died on 1 May 1931 of a heart attack while in London for an exhibition He was buried in Sancreed churchyard in Cornwall Also in the graveyard of St Sancredus are buried fellow Newlyn School artists, Stanhope Alexander Forbes and Elizabeth Adela Forbes

With his parents' support, in 1876 and 1877 he first studied at Heatherley's art school in London and then at Koninklijke Academie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp in 1877 and 1878 Then in 1879 Gotch attended Slade School of Fine Art with Alphonse Legros in London Gotch met his friend Henry Scott Tuke and his future wife Caroline Yates at Slade After their marriage, Thomas and Caroline studied in Paris at Académie Julian and Académie Laurens in the early 1880s It was in Paris that he adopted the plein-air approach of painting outdoors

Her only daughter, Phyllis Marian Gotch (born in France in 1882), made the Gotch family a pillar of the Newlyn social scene She and her circle of friends (used by Gotch as models) inspired the stories of HD Lowry Phyllis later became a writer and a singer and married he spelled out in 1913

The works:
Initially, Newlyn Gotch painted local scenes realistically, in any case these paintings often had a romantic inclination

After a visit to Florence in 1891, he opened his eyes on Neo-Romanticism and European symbolism Her first work with her new romantic style was My Crown and Scepter (1892), anticipating the childhood "The Child Enthroned" of 1894 This last work was acclaimed by The Times Like the Royal Academy's star of the year, so far its new style had been criticized and despised

He also painted Christian religious scenes, historical paintings, portraits and some landscapes His most famous works, which are a significant part of his work, are a series of performances of a girl in medieval clothes The representation of these girls is often emphasized as an element of modernity in her paintings At the same time, her close friend, Henry Scott Tuke, focused on the representation of children Adoration of the beauty of the girls was shared by other great Victorian men like John Ruskin and Lewis Carroll

His emotional work was immensely popular and acclaimed for most of his life, but after the First World War his interest in neo-romance collapsed and he painted watercolors of flowers He also illustrated many books, such as Round About Wiltshire, The Land of Pardons (a first study of Breton folklore and Celtic Christianity) and illustrated school anthologies such as Highroads of Literature

A retrospective was held at Newcastle upon Tyne in 1910 and an exhibition in his memory was made to Kettering in 1931

Exhibitions:
Many of Gotch's works have survived and are still in England Gotch's life and work manuscripts are kept at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London Kettering's Albert East Gallery has a large collection of his works, but only a part of it is exposed
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