A View of Nevis from St. Kitts

The painting hangs in the drawing room of Bristol’s Georgian House. It is likely to have been commissioned by John Pinney, who built the house in 1790. Pinney was a wealthy Bristol sugar merchant, with a plantation, Mantravers, on the Caribbean island of Nevis.

Nicholas Pocock’s first career was as a mariner, and later a captain, on many trade voyages to the Caribbean, including some carrying enslaved Africans. After 1776, he retired from the sea to his home in Bristol, to follow a career as a painter.