Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Pouncy, Benjamin Thomas
POUNCY, BENJAMIN THOMAS (d. 1799), draughtsman and engraver, was a pupil of William Woollett [q. v.], and is said to have been his brother-in-law (Gent. Mag. 1799, ii. 726). At an early period he obtained employment at Lambeth Palace, and for many years previous to 1786 held the post of deputy-librarian there under Dr. Ducarel and his successor, Dr. Lort. During that time he assisted Ducarel in his researches, executed facsimiles of Domesday for Surrey and Worcestershire, and engraved the plates for many antiquarian and topographical works, such as Ducarel's ‘History of St. Katherine's Hospital,’ 1782; Astle's ‘Origin and Progress of Writing,’ 1784; ‘Some Account of the Alien Priories,’ edited by J. Nichols, 1779; and Ives's ‘Remarks upon the Garianonum of the Romans,’ 1774. During the latter part of his life Pouncy produced some excellent plates of landscape and marine subjects after popular artists, of which the best are: ‘Athens in its Flourishing State,’ after R. Wilson, and ‘Athens in its Present State of Ruin,’ after S. Delane (a pair); ‘Sortie made by the Garrison of Gibraltar on 27 Nov. 1781,’ after A. Poggi; the building, chase, unlading, and dissolution of a cutter (a set of four), after J. Kitchingman, 1783 and 1785; ‘N.W. View of Rochester,’ after J. Farington, 1790; ‘The Morning of the Glorious First of June 1794,’ after R. Cleveley, 1796; ‘The Windmill’ and ‘The Watermill,’ from his own drawings, 1787; and four landscapes after J. Hearne. Pouncy also executed many of the plates in Captain Cook's second and third ‘Voyages,’ after Hodges and Webber, 1777 and 1784; Sir G. Staunton's ‘Embassy of Lord Macartney to China,’ 1797; Farington's ‘Views of the Lakes in Cumberland and Westmorland,’ 1789; Bowyer's ‘History of England,’ Macklin's Bible, and the ‘Copperplate Magazine.’ He was a fellow of the Incorporated Society of Artists, and exhibited topographical views with them in 1772 and 1773; he also sent works of the same class to the Royal Academy in 1782, 1788, and 1789. Woollett engraved ‘The Grotto at Amwell,’ from a drawing by Pouncy, as an illustration to John Scott's ‘Poems,’ 1782. Pouncy died in Pratt Street, Lambeth, on 22 Aug. 1799, and was buried in the graveyard of the parish church.
A portrait of Pouncy, drawn by Edridge, is in the print room of the British Museum.
[Gent. Mag. 1799, ii. 726; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760–1880; Nichols's Literary Anecdotes, viii. 40, 625, ix. 534, 719; Nichols's History of Lambeth, 1786, App. p. 145; Lambeth burial register.]