(1735 - 1822), 4th s. of John Coutts, ld. provost of Edinburgh; joined Coutts bank 1760, sole partner from 1778; m. 1 1763 Susan Starkie, 2 1815 Harriet Mellon.
1790 [London Sep. 1789] Rome (Jan. 1790), Naples (by 28 Feb. - 14 Mar.), Rome (by 30 Mar. - May), Verona [Augsburg Aug. 1790; Calais, 24 Mar. 1791]
In 1789 Thomas Coutts took his wife and three daughters to Italy through France, though Charles Fox had advised a route through Germany; 'snubbed' by Mr Pitt, he went without letters of introduction.1
In January 1790 in Rome Angelica Kauffman completed a portrait of his three daughters, Susan, Fanny and Sophia Coutts ('all dressed alike in white, attired like the muses or the graces').2 Mrs Coutts, no dilettante, thought the Colosseum would be 'a very pretty building', once finished and whitewashed.3 The family went on to Naples,4 but were back in Rome on 30 March 1790.5 In 1790 Coutts took his wife and daughters to Frascati to visit Henry Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York, who gave him a silver medal; later, as banker to the king, Coutts transmitted to the Cardinal his allowance from George III.6
1. E.H. Coleridge, Life & Times of Thos.Coutts, 282 - 3. M.W. Patterson, Sir Francis Burdett & his times, 1:24. 2. Kauffman 1924, 159. 3. Taylor Papers, 8. 4. Coleridge, 270, 285. Patterson (at n1), 24. Gibbes jnl.MSS (14 Mar. 1790). 5. Gibbes jnl.MSS. 6. Coleridge (at n1), 270 - 1. Coutts & Co., pamphlet [1964]. J. Lees Milne, The Last Stuarts, 150.