Thomas Gooch

Thomas Gooch was born in London, England c.1750 where he lived the majority of his life; he died at Lyndhurt, Hampshire in 1802. Most famous for his work depicting animals, Gooch also painted images of those that owned the horses and dogs he readily depicted. He carried out a study of the life of a racehorse as a set of six images, depicting the animal's misuse after a life of racing as a thoroughbred. The Life and Death of a Racehorse was completed in 1792, it was a popular work and reproduced as aquatint prints and often accompanied with a thought-inducing text on animal cruelty. Gooch was an artist who was quite popular wit the landed gentry and second generation nobility, leading to him exhibiting many times at and within the Royal Academy.