George Cole (artist)

[1] According to the artist's grandson, Rex Vicat Cole, he was apprenticed to a ship's painter in the Royal Navy dockyards at Portsmouth.

After the sitter refused to pay him, saying it was a bad likeness, Cole added wings and put the painting in a shop window with the title The Flying Dutchman.

[4] His career has been regarded as a good example of the Victorian self-made man: in 1831 he married Eliza Vicat, of an old French Huguenot family.

[5] By 1850 Cole had begun to concentrate on landscape, drawing on Dutch precedents for compositions such as London Road, Portsdown (1847, Portsmouth City Museum and Art Gallery).

Cattle continued to play an important role in his compositions, and he specialized in the depiction of river scenery with cows watering, including, for example, Windsor Castle (1876, exh.

While, at his best, he was capable of sophisticated effects, the sheer volume of his production of smaller works, sold directly to dealers such as Thomas McLean and Arthur Tooth, inevitably led to a lowering of standards.