State before publication line. A full-length portrait of Philemon Pownoll (b. in or before 1734, d. 1780) in commander’s undress uniform, 1748–1767, leaning against an anchor with his legs crossed and ships in the left-hand distance. Lettered beneath the image in scratched letters, ‘Captain Pownall.’ This portrait was engraved by Edwin Hunt after Joshua Reynolds’s oil painting of 1762–5, which is now in the Neue Pincakothek in Munich. The print was published by Henry Graves & Co. in 1862. Pownoll (sometimes spelled Pownall) was the son of Israel Pownoll, a master shipwright at Plymouth and Chatham. As commander of the sloop Favourite, 16 guns, Pownoll captured a Spanish register ship, the Hermione, off Cape St Mary in May 1762 with assistance from the frigate Active, which was under the command of Captain Herbert Sawyer. The Hermione was carrying an extremely valuable cargo, including bags of dollars, gold coin, ingots of gold and silver, cocoa and blocks of tin. Pownoll’s share of the prize money was £64,872, making him a very rich man. He married Jane Majendie, the daughter of a Lisbon merchant, at Gibraltar on 16 May 1762 and purchased a country estate at Ashprington in Devon, where he built a large house. To commemorate his marriage and to signal his enhanced wealth and status, he commissioned Reynolds to the full-length portrait represented in this print together with a pendant portrait of his new wife Jane dressed as Hebe, the Greek goddess of youth. (Updated May 2019.)