Thomas Butts
{{Short description|British patron of art (1759–1846)}}
{{for|the baseball player|Pee Wee Butts}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Thomas Butts
| image =Portrait of Thomas Butts c1801 The British Museum.jpg
| caption = Thomas Butts c.1801, watercolour on ivory by William Blake, in the British Museum
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| birth_date = 1757
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| death_date = 1845
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| nationality = British
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Thomas Butts (1757–1845) was an English senior civil servant, and the leading patron to the artist and poet William Blake.{{cite web |title=Thomas Butts (Biographical details) |url=https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database/term_details.aspx?bioId=130442 |website=British Museum |accessdate=20 December 2019}}
Early life and family
Thomas Butts was born in 1757 to Thomas Butts and Hannah Witham.{{cite web | url=http://bq.blakearchive.org/30.1.viscomi | title=A "Green House" for Butts? New Information on Thomas Butts, His Residences, and Family | Joseph Viscomi | Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly | Volume 30, Issue 1 }} He married Elizabeth Mary Cooper (1754–1825), who was a schoolmistress.{{cite journal |last1=Johnson |first1=Mary Lynn |title=Newfound Particulars of Blake's Patrons, Thomas and Elizabeth Butts, 1767–1806 |url=https://blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/johnson474/johnson474html |journal=Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly |date=4 April 2014 |volume=47 |issue=4 |doi=10.47761/biq.135 |s2cid=164989929 |accessdate=20 December 2019|url-access=subscription }} They lived at number 9, Great Marlborough Street, Soho, London. Their great-granddaughter was the modernist writer Mary Butts (1890–1937).
Career
Butts was Assistant Commissary of Musters, and chief clerk to the Commissary General of Musters.
Butts and William Blake first met in about 1799, and he regularly advanced Blake money to pay for future work. Blake taught engraving to Butts' son. Blake created a number of miniatures of the Butts family during the period from about 1801 to 1809, and these are in the collection of the British Museum. The patronage reduced from about 1816, although Butts purchased a set of the Job engravings in 1825, and in 1827 was a subscriber for the Dante engravings.