T.C. Gotch: Student Days and Marriage

"The Exile: Heavy is the price I paid for love"
by Thomas Cooper Gotch

"Many men have sought for the philosopher's stone. Others, mechanically inclined, have striven for mastery over perpetual motion. Others, again, feel themselves drawn to speculation and experiments relating to the secret of the old masters of painting. It has been remarked that the giants of the past merely mixed their colours with brains, time doing the rest. A Mr. Samuel Lawrence who flourished some twenty years ago rose to fame on the strength of his own pronouncement that he had discovered this secret of the old masters. To his studio Mr. Gotch went on his return from Antwerp, and with Mr. Lawrence he remained three months. When I leant my elbows on the table and said coaxingly to Mr. Gotch, 'Tell me the secret,' he replied, 'Oh, it's far too technical to explain,' whereupon I shunted from that siding of our conversation, and the painter, inclining his head in recognition of my restraint, proceeded to narrate his artistic adventures at the Slade school, where he remained two years under Legros.

At that time he also came under the influence of Charles Gogin, a man hardly known to Academy patrons, but one who had considerable influence upon contemporary art and artists. He knew all about values and Mr. Gotch profited by this teaching. 

He had now reached the fourth year of studentship. What should follow? One word, one word only, rises to the lips in answer to that question. Paris! Paris the gay, the bright, where the art of encouragement is still practiced and the student's work always in some grave master's eye. Mr. Gotch sat at the feet of Jean Paul Laurens. He lived in one of those turnings decked with white houses off a wide road in the Montparnasse quarter. Three years he remained in the city on the Seine. 

There, on a certain day, a piece of very good luck befell him. He met a fellow student, who was also doing good work, and who has since done better, which has been ofttimes hung a the Royal Academy and elsewhere - a young English lady, Caroline Burland Yates. They married and lived in a little flat high up in a white building overlooking a sequestered courtyard in the Quartier Latin. Mr. Gotch owes much to his wife's intelligent and sympathetic criticism and appreciation. She brought him luck too, for in 1882 a picture of his was hung upon the line at the Royal Academy. It was called 'Phillis,' and speedily found a buyer."

To be continued

(Excerpt from "T.C. Gotch and His Pictures" by Lewis Hind in "The Windsor Magazine.")