GOOCH, Thomas

English painter. He was a London based painter principally of horses but also of cattle, dogs, shooting scenes and coaches, the latter often in very accurately depicted scenes of old London. Surprisingly little is known of the life of this highly talented artist although he was almost certainly a pupil of the important equestrian painter Sawrey Gilpin.

Much of his work was horse portraiture but he was sometimes drawn to the humorous, or included a moral theme to his paintings. The series of paintings entitled "The Life of a Racehorse" made him the first to promote a reforming message and their exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1783 was well enough received for him to engrave them in aquatintGLOSSARYAn engraving method related to etching but producing finely granulated tonal areas rather than lines. The term applies also to a print made by this method. There are several variants of the technique, but in essence the process is as follows. A metal plate is sprinkled with acid-resistant varnish, which is fused to the plate by heating, and when the plate is immersed in an acid bath the acid bites between the tiny particles of resin and produces an evenly granulated surface. The design is created by drawing on the plate with add-resistant varnish, and great variety of tone can be obtained by immersing in acid and varnishing in turn (the longer the add bites, the darker the tone). Aquatint was invented around the middle of the 18th century, and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was highly popular in England for reproducing watercolours (colour could be added by hand or by using several plates with different coloured inks). It has also been used as an original creative medium (sometimes in conjunction with other graphic techniques) by many distinguished artists, including Goya, Degas, Picasso, and Rouault. and publish them in 1790. They were remarkable in that they were the first to display human emotions in sporting scenes and consequently Gooch was a marked influence on Sir Edwin Landseer and other later Victorian animal painters.

Gooch was a prolific exhibitor at the Royal Academy (76 paintings in all) and was patronised by many of the leading members of the Scots and English aristocracy. In 1800 he was suffering from a paralytic stroke which affected his right hand. He died in Lyndhurst in 1802.