Captain Stephen Ponsonby Peacocke (1813 – 29 May 1872) was a British officer of the Bombay Army and an artist notable for his 17 paintings of historic landscape views in the Nilgiri Hills in South India.

Peacocke's lithographs reflect the romantic escape to a temperate hilly area that all British people in the plains yearned for in those days.

[8][9] In 1837, Stephen Ponsonby Peacocke Jr. and Isabella Anne Louisa Brydges born 1815, the daughter of a baronet, were married, probably while he was on leave in England.

[15] In April 1843 he was furloughed to England for nine months for the purpose of effecting an exchange or retiring, either on half-pay or by the sale of his commission.

[16] On the same day he appears on the list of Majors who have retired by sale, by commutation, with a gratuity or by surrender of half pay, not in the reserve.

His lithographs reflect the romantic escape to a temperate hilly area that all British people in the plains yearned for in those days.

Furlough was usually only every five years or so but there was the nearby refuge of the cool climate of the Indian hills to seek, especially Ooty with its downs, primulas and strawberries growing wild.

[1] In May 1847, the imperial folio Koondah Ranges, Western Ghauts, Madras, at & about the Stations of Ootacamund and Conoor, and the Segoor, Koondah and Conoor Passes, with vignette title page and sixteen large (54 centimeters (21 in) x 38 centimeters (15 in)) plates after Peacocke was executed in the best style of tinted lithography printed on card stock, with added hand colouring, in contemporary half morocco leather binding with gilt spine for the price of £2, 12s.

The soft but brilliant glow of light in the South Indian hills is beautifully captured by the artist in each of the drawings.

The following gallery of Peacocke's landscape lithographs is ordered geographically from the Low Country & Coonoor Pass, up through General View of Ootacamund and continuing west up along the Sispara Ghat road past Avalanche and culminating in the most dramatic geography in the Nilgiri Hills; View in the Koondahs, near Sispara.

[21] (*) On 19–31 August 2009 nine of these lithographs, from the private collection of V. Narayan Swami, were displayed in the exhibition of rare, unique and never-before-seen etchings, engravings & aquatints: "Madras: From the City to the Presidency" at the Vennirul Art Gallery, C.P.

By 1860, Peacocke had bought some land near the Pensioner Settlement of Howick, East Tāmaki, and remained settled there for the rest of his life.

He commanded the district extending from Wairoa South to Ōtāhuhu, a line which at the beginning of the war was practically "the front", defended by Galloway's and St. John's redoubts.