Though self-taught, his fine feeling for colour, poetic sympathy, and dramatic power gained Poole a high position among British artists.

[3] Poole exhibited his first work in the Royal Academy at the age of twenty-five, the subject being The Well, a scene in Naples.

In 1843, his position was made secure by his Solomon Eagle,[6] and by his success in the Cartoon Exhibition, in which he received from the Fine Art Commissioners a prize of £300 sterling.

After his exhibition of the Surrender of Syon House, he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1846, and was made an academician in 1861.

Poole was a close friend of landscape artist Thomas Danby (c. 1818–1886) with whom he shared a house in Hampstead, London for a time.