Early Georgian Portraits Catalogue: Pocock

Sir George Pocock (1706-92)

Admiral; entered the navy, 1718; in command in the Leeward Islands, 1747-48; rear-admiral of the white, 1755, vice-admiral, 1756; in command in East India, 1758-59; fought two indecisive sea battles with the French; admiral of the blue and KB, 1761; captured Havana, 1762; retired 1766.

1787 After a portrait by Thomas Hudson of c.1761
Oil on canvas, 29 ¾ x 24 ¾ in. (755 x 630 mm); dark blue eyes, pale grey eyebrows, long upper lip, cleft chin, ruddy complexion, short grey wig with three rows of curls; dark blue uniform (flag officer's full dress 1748-67 [1] ) and white waistcoat, both gold-braided, ribbon of the Bath over his right shoulder, star on his left breast, white neck-cloth and wrist ruffles; in his left hand, a wooden telescope with brass eye-piece, his hat tucked in the crook of his arm which rests on a stone pedestal; greenish-blue background.

On the back of the relining canvas a label in ink, date uncertain, reads: Admiral / Sir George Pocock / KGB;on the top stretcher bar is a printed ticket 126.

Although relined and probably older than its wedged stretcher, the portrait is evidently not from Hudson's own hand. The paint suggests it is more likely to be late 18th or early 19th century. A similar 30 x 25 at Sutton Court in the possession of Lord O'Hagan was presumably painted for his ancestor Sir Henry Strachey (1737-1810) (seeabove Clive, NPG 39). Though the sitter’s name had been lost in that collection, and it is in a more recent frame, the canvas appears to be by Hudson himself. The first version, however, is likely to be the three-quarter length, which came to light in 1960. This is in the possession of Lt-Col. P.F. Thorne, the type presumably originating between 1761, when the sitter was awarded the Bath, and the date of McArdell's engraving (CS 145), the third state of which, 1762, alludes to the . . . Reduction of the Havannah 1762. Lt-Col. Thorne's portrait, like the engraving, has a ship in the background, right. A similar head engraved by F. Aliamet was published in the British Magazine,1762.

Condition:minor losses in the varnish on the ribbon; pin holes at corners.

Collections:bought, May 1917, from G. Cohen, the purchaser at the sale, Phillips Son & Neale, 24 April 1917, lot 163 of the sitter's great grandson Sir G.F.C. Pocock, 3rd Bart.

Iconography

A portrait, without description but possibly NPG 1787, was lent to the 'Royal Naval Exhibition', Chelsea, 1891 (354), by Sir G.F.C. Pocock, and what seems to be a pre-Italian Reynolds, was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, Mexico, 1963. [2] The only other portraits are the statue of 1764 by Scheemakers, commissioned with those of Clive and Lawrence by the East India Company, and the medallion of 1792 by J. Bacon in Westminster Abbey.

Notes

1. Information from the National Maritime Museum.
2. Inscribed (?), though stated to be signed and dated Hudson Pinxit 1749.