This
is an account of the visit made by Tom and Caroline Gotch
and their daughter Phyllis to Florence in the winter of 1891-1892.
The visit was said to mark a turning point in Tom Gotch‘s
work as an artist. After the visit he was to concentrate on
richly coloured and intricately patterned images rather than
the more muted colours of his earlier work. He was largely
to abandon the typical Newlyn subject matter in favour of
more symbolic subject matter. After his visit to Italy, he
began to depict a new idea about a spiritual ‘rite de
passage’ through childhood and into adulthood. His paintings
on this theme mainly, though not wholly, focus on girls and
women.
The most important painting from the Italian visit was My Crown and Sceptre, which was shown at the Royal Academy in 1892 and hung on the line. The booklet contains a colour reproduction of this painting, which now hangs in the Art Gallery of New South Wales as well as a number of other colour and black and white images
Pam Lomax’s account attempts to discover why the visit to Florence was such a momentous event for Tom Gotch. The author bases her argument about the change of direction in Tom Gotch’s painting on her analysis of a story that Gotch wrote in 1904. The story, called The Professor is an autobiographical account of an incident that occurred during the Italian visit. The Professor by Tom Gotch is reproduced in the book.
A Winter in Florence 1891 – 1892
Pamela Lomax
Shears & Hogg Publications,
May 2001. 32 pages.
Price £4.95
ISBN 0-9540249-0-7
Publications available from:
Shears & Hogg Publications,
Wheal Betsy,
Newlyn, Cornwall, TR18 5AP, UK
Email: cameo@tcgotch.co.uk
