POOLEY, Thomas

1646 - 1723

Thomas Pooley was born at Ipswich in 1646, eldest of the four sons of Thomas Pooley, an attorney, and his wife Douglas Neville, third daughter and co-heiress of Edward Neville. Young Thomas commenced his career in his father’s profession and entered Gray’s Inn in 1664. Trained as an artist in England but about 1677 moved to Dublin and is one of the earliest known portrait painters in Ireland. The earliest notice of him as a Dublin artist is in 1682, when he painted a portrait of 'King Charles II' for the Corporation - The King's picture at length in a frame of Ł10 value. In January 1683, Pooley was admitted to the freedom of the Painter-Stayners and Cutlers Corporation of the Guild of St Luke and in 1719 presented his portrait, a half-length painted by himself, to the Painter-Stayners and Cutlers' Corporation and it was hung in their Hall, where there was also a portrait by him of 'Queen Mary II'. Probably the ‘Pole’ who appears in the Duke of Newcastle’s accounts 1689-1690. His wife, Mary Crow, whom he married in 1686, was daughter and heir of Thomas Crow, and may have predeceased him. Thomas Pooley was buried at Dublin on 13 February 1723 leaving an only daughter, Elizabeth, who married at St Andrew's, Dublin on 9 December 1721, Joshua Paul, Captain of Dragoons, afterwards Lt.-Colonel of the 1st Foot Guards, who died in 1767.

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Works by This Artist