A view of the Arno, Florence, from the Cascine Gardens, with figures fishing and resting on the rocks in the foreground, the Ponte alla Carità and the Ponte Vecchio beyond

Thomas Patch was born in Exeter and travelled to Rome in 1747 where he met Joshua Reynolds and quickly settled into the established colony of British artists and connoisseurs. He soon attracted the attention of the French landscape painter Claude-Joseph Vernet, in whose studio he worked from 1750 until 1753. Expelled from the Papal States in 1755, probably on grounds of ‘moral turpitude’ (E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters in oils and crayons, Woodbridge, 1981, p. 69), he settled in Florence establishing a successful painting practice helped by his friendship with Sir Horace Mann, the British Envoy to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, who gave him introductions to the touring British milordi. The latter were a key source of patronage and it was principally for this group that Patch executed his celebrated views in and around Florence.

This view is taken from the Cascine Gardens, looking East along the River Arno with the Ponte alla Carità and the Ponte Vecchio beyond. Brunelleschi’s Cupola for the city’s cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, and Giotto’s Campanile can be seen through the trees of the Cascine Gardens on the extreme left, with the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio on the right. The church of San Frediano in Cestello flanks the right of the composition on the Oltrarno side of the river.

This view can be compared with the picture, dated 1771, in the collection of the Marquess of Cholmondeley, Houghton Hall, Norfolk (see F.J.B. Watson, ‘Thomas Patch (1725-1782)’, The Walpole Society, XXVIII, Oxford, 1940, p. 39, no. 25).

We are grateful to Fausta Navarro for confirming the attribution to Patch (on the basis of photographs) and dating the work to the 1770s.