![Portrait of the Artist Portrait of the Artist](https://cmsadmin.rct.uk/sites/default/files/lead_image_half_height/PoA%20half%20height.png)
A self-portrait as an ox
c. 1768-70RCIN 811275
The landscape painter Thomas Patch developed an interest in physiognomy, the supposed science of determining character through the form of one's face and body. This remarkable self-portrait is an exercise in false modesty: it alludes to the ancient idea that 'every painter paints himself', and Patch thus shows himself as bovine by nature. But the inscriptions in Latin and garbled Italian below are a quotation from the Gospel of Saint Luke, 'he that humbleth himself shall be exalted'.
No. 108