WD4524

Small half-length portrait of Jacob Cowles (1774-1850), of the East India Company’s maritime service. He is seated on a chair looking slightly to his right and wears a dark blue coat with black velvet collar, with buff waistcoat and white stock.

Signed: ‘R Coslett fecit 1817.’

Cowles was the son of the goldsmith George Cowles (d. 1811), who had been apprenticed to Samuel Courtauld (1720-65) in 1751 and in 1768 married the latter’s niece Judith, the daughter of the Huguenot goldsmith Jean Jacob (1709-1787) and his wife Anne Courtauld (1710-93), daughter of the first goldsmith in the Courtauld family, Augustin Courtauld (1685-1751). Cowles was apparently in partnership for a while with Samuel’s widow Louisa (1729-1807), but this was dissolved in 1777 when he moved his shop to Lombard Street. (See entry for Courtauld family in ‘The New Oxford DNB.’) Not apparently wishing to follow family tradition, Jacob Cowles at age fifteen in 1789 joined the Indiaman ‘Osterley’ as servant to Captain Joseph Clarkson, on a voyage to India and China, before becoming a midshipman (1792) and then fifth mate (1794) in the same ship. He moved up the ranks through different Indiamen, becoming first mate in the ‘Cumberland’ for the 1806-07 season (approved 19 November 1806, aged 32), in which he served for two subsequent voyages. He became captain of the ‘Lord Eldon’ for two voyages 1812-13 (to Batavia, during the British occupation of Java) and 1814-15 (to Madras and Bengal).