Gore left England for Italy because of his wife's health in 1773; he took with him his three daughters and arrived in Rome from Florence in 1775. There he and his daughters took lessons from Philipp Hackert; Goethe records in his Biographical Sketch of Hackert that they spent two summers with him at Castel Gandolfo, and in the winters in Rome most of their evenings were passed at Hackert's house together with other members of the artistic community, both English and foreign