Caricatures, Campagna, and Connoisseurs: Thomas Patch and the British Grand Tour in Eighteenth-Century Italy

Joint Lewis Walpole Library-Farmington Libraries Exhibition Talk.

The talk, presented in collaboration with the Farmington Libraries, will look at the work of artist Thomas Patch, the subject of the exhibition Caricatures, Campagna, and Connoisseurs: Thomas Patch and the British Grand Tour in Eighteenth-Century Italy. Known primarily as a caricature artist, Thomas Patch (1725-1782) was also a landscape painter, experimental printmaker, and a dealer of antiquities and old master paintings. The talk, like the exhibition, will explore the many aspects of Patch’s art, life, and associations with the British community of diplomats, tourists, artists, and collectors in Italy.

Hugh Belsey, MBE, guest curator of the LWL’s autumn exhibition, is the former curator of Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury (UK) and author of the award-winning catalogue of portraits by Thomas Gainsborough.

Space is limited and advance registration is required.

This lecture complements the exhibition “Caricatures, Campagna, and Connoisseurs: Thomas Patch and the British Grand Tour in Eighteenth-Century Italy,” on view at Lewis Walpole Library from Sept. 10 to Dec. 23.