Self Portrait with Two Square Brushes, c.1880 (oil on canvas)

Painting himself holding square brushes, known as 'brights' or 'flats' brush, is here something of a statement by the artist. Those who used them 'leave the brushmarks and do not smooth away the evidence of method' (Scottish Arts Review, 1889). The particular practitioner of the technique was the French rural naturalist painter Jules Bastien Lepage whose work was the sensation of the Grosvenor Gallery in 1880, creating amongst young British painters what Stanhope Forbes called 'the unflinching realism of the cult of Bastien Lepage.' Later, Gotch became a founder member of the New English Art Club, set up in 1887 to represent and provide a venue for English painters influenced by French painters, Gotch associated himself with those artists based at Newlyn in Cornwall painting by the example of Bastien, rather than the Impressionist influenced Chelsea painters such as Whistler, whose technique was looser.