After an apprenticeship in the Bristol shipbuilding yards of Richard Champion, Nicholas Pocock (1741 - 1821) began a career at sea in the mid 1760s. He was a practiced and gifted amateur watercolourist, and when in command of the Lloyd, one of Champion’s ships, he began to keep detailed log-books illustrated with wash drawings, four of which are at the National Maritime Museum. In 1780 he gave up his maritime career, and sent his first oil painting to the Royal Academy. The picture arrived too late for exhibition, but Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote back, noting ‘It is much beyond what I expected from a first essay in oil colours’. Pocock exhibited annually at the Academy between 1782 and 1812 and enjoyed a steady supply of commissions for oil paintings and watercolours, mostly of a maritime subject matter. He produced a series of watercolours of Bristol in the 1780s, many of which were engraved, and also of Iceland in 1791.
[Oil on canvas, 71.7 x 101.6 cm]
No comments:
Post a Comment