Probably a student of Sawrey Gilpin, Gooch painted mainly horses and dogs, and exhibited seventy-six paintings at the Royal Academy between 1781 and 1802. He is described by Sally Mitchell as 'the Hogarth of the sporting artists', being the first to produce a series of paintings with a moral reforming theme entitled The life of a racehorse (The Dictionary of British Equestrian Artists, Suffolk, 1985, p. 238). Gooch spent most of his career in London, but died in Lyndhurst, Hampshire in 1802.