PATCH, Thomas

English painter and engraver, active in Italy. He was the son of a doctor and was expected to become an apothecary. In 1747 he travelled to Rome, where he met Joshua Reynolds and worked in the studio of Claude-Joseph Vernet, producing pastiches of Vernet's work and his own views of Tivoli. However, in 1755 Patch was banished from the Papal States for some homosexual act and settled in Florence. His friendship with the British envoy Sir Horace Mann provided him with introductions to English tourists, who commissioned copies after the Old Masters and views of Florence, such as the Piazza della SignoriaGLOSSARYfrom the late Middle Ages, the governing body of some of the Italian city states, usually presided over by individual families. (1763; City Museum and Art GalleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen)., Plymouth).

During the 1760s he painted caricature groups of the painters, dealers and Grand Tourists of Anglo-Florentine society. He also made an extensive study of varying types of faces and expressions (destroyed). The caricatures are of a type also painted by Reynolds and include the Punch Party (1760; Dunham Massey, Cheshire) and Golden Asses (1761; Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library, New Haven); together with his two sets of engraved caricatures, they provide a light-hearted reminder of the serious physiognomical study. A further series of books of engravings after Masaccio, Fra Bartolommeo, Giotto and Ghiberti, produced in the 1770s, are evidence of Patch's scholarly interest in early Italian art. He was also engaged in art dealing.

It seems that he painted little towards the end of his life. He died in Florence on 30th April 1782 after suffering a stroke and after a sojourn in Italy of 35 years.