Isaac Pocock

Isaac Pocock (2 March 1782 – 23 August 1835) was an English dramatist and painter of portraits and historical subjects. He wrote melodramas, farces and light operatic comedies, many being stage adaptations of existing novels. Of his 40 or so works, the most successful was Hit and Miss (1810), a musical farce. The mariner Sir Isaac Pocock (1751–1810) was his uncle. Life Isaac Pocock was born in Bristol on 2 March 1782, the eldest son of Nicholas Pocock, marine painter, and Ann Evans (daughter of John Evans of Bristol). William Innes Pocock (1783–1836), a naval officer and author, was his brother. About 1798, Isaac became a pupil of George Romney, with Thomas Alphonso Hayley, son of the writer William Hayley, as a fellow student. After Romney's death in 1802, he studied under Sir William Beechey. Between 1800 and 1805, Pocock exhibited subject-pictures and portraits at the Royal Academy, London, and occasionally showed portraits there over the next 15 years. In 1807 his Murder of St. Thomas à Becket was awarded a prize of £100 by the British Institution. In 1812 Pocock became a member of the Liverpool Academy, and exhibited oils and water-colours there. His last historical painting was an altar-piece for a new chapel at Maidenhead.