Studio: international art (13.1898)

The Work of T. C. Gotch

the treatment of details was neglected or left un-
explained, and no minute touch of exact definition
was forgotten, yet all through the charm of a dainty
and poetic idea made itself felt. With the one
exception of Death the Bride, exhibited at the
Academy in 1895, Mr. Gotch's pictures since The
Child Enthroned have carried on the same motives.
Death the Bride sounded a deeper and perhaps
less pleasant note, and had a mystic suggestion
that was not quite free from morbidity; but The
Child in the World at the New Gallery in 1895,
Alleluia shown at the Academy and bought by the
Trustees of the Chantrey Fund in 1896, and the
exquisite composition, The Heir to all the Ages,
which represented the artist at the Academy last
year, were admirable decorations, full of healthy
invention and hitting happily the safe middle
course between phantasy and literal reality. By
these works Mr. Gotch has established himself
securely among the best of our imaginative painters,
and has proved in a manner most creditable to
himself that there is nothing incongruous in the
union of fact and fancy, or in an alliance between
delicate imagery and assiduous care in the arrange-
ment and realisation of properly selected facts.

It is, possibly, because his art education and
early experiences were somewhat varied that Mr.

Gotch has, as a producing artist, gone through
such distinct differences in his search for the one
mode of expression which would accord best with
his own aesthetic individuality. He was not in-
fluenced from the first by surroundings which could
fix and determine his after practice, and did not
by long adherence to any one school become
permanently affected by any set of local traditions.
Before he began the serious study of art he was
engaged for four years in business ; and it was not
till he had reached the age of twenty-one years
that he decided to devote himself to the profession
that he has since followed with so much success.
His first experiences were gained at Heatherley's
school, to which he went in the spring of 1876 ;
but in the autumn of the following year he became
a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts at Antwerp,
and worked there for six months. In 1878 he
returned to London, and, after three months' study
under Mr. Samuel Lawrence, joined the Slade
school for a period of two years. Three years'
fairly continuous study in Paris, in the studio of
Jean Paul Laurens, followed, but during this period
there were intervals in which he was working at
Newlyn. After a voyage to Australia in 1883 he
spent three years in London, and then once more
took up his abode at Newlyn, which place has