Illustration to Falconer's 'The Shipwreck', after Pocock's original watercolour PAF5917. Exhibited: NMM Pocock exh. (1975), no. 43 (v).

One of six copies by an unidentified hand after Pocock's original drawings (not apparently from the Fittler prints made from them) for the 1811 edition of 'The Shipwreck'. The set of ten by the same copyist is completed by four after other Falconer illustrators, at least one being Robert Dodd. Harley Preston, in cataloguing the six after Pocock for the 1975 NMM Pocock exhibition, noted an earlier suggestion that the copyist may have been William Innes Pocock, Nicholas's son, but thought it unlikely given that not all the originals used were by his father. The value of the copies after Pocock is that, while in a weaker hand, they are comparatively well preserved and indicate the originals' early colour, now faded from over-exposure to light. All six copies after Pocock, exhibited as no. 43 (i -vi) in the 1975 NMM show, are those now numbered as PAJ1639-1640, PAJ1643-1645, and PAJ 1648, though this is only based on comparison of the MIMSY and 1975 catalogue titles, and remains to be confirmed by inspection of the drawings. This suggests that PAJ1641, 1642, 1646 and 1647 are the ones after other artists, though still noted on MIMSY as 'after Pocock (?)', though these numbers too, and the artists being copied, also remain to be confirmed. [PvdM 10/08]