Portrait of Giles Hancock by Charles Hancock

Portrait of Giles Hancock by Charles Hancock, oil on board. Giles Hancock is depicted seated in a brown armchair. He wears brown trousers and a dark green coat. The painting is square with rounded top corners, and is in a broad, ornate, square gilt frame. A metal plaque on the frame immediately beneath the painting reads ‘GILES HANCOCK’.

Giles Hancock was a member of the Hancock family of Marlborough, England. The Hancocks were a significant British family in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known for their contributions to science, art, and industry.

This portrait was painted by Charles Hancock (1800-1877). Charles was a painter and inventor who had 25 paintings displayed at the Royal Academy.

This object is part of a collection relating to the Hancock family, acquired in 2018 from a descendant and family historian of the Hancocks. The collection comprises portraits covering 4 generations of the Hancock family (including 7 painted by Charles Hancock), personal and business archives, and a series of related objects. Thomas Hancock is the centre of the story – inventor of the patent masticator and founder of the British rubber industry. The Hancock company ran until the 1930s, led by Thomas’s nephew and assistant, James Lyne Hancock, and then a great nephew John Hancock Nunn.