'Iffley Mill,' 'Windsor,' and 'Richmond Hill ' (1875), and many views of Streatley, Wargrave, and the backwaters near Henley, which were no less popular than the Surrey landscapes. In 1881, at the suggestion of Mr. (afterwards Sir William) Agnew, Cole conceived the idea of painting a complete series of views on the Thames from its source to its mouth, which were to be engraved. The project was never carried out in its entirety, but almost all Cole's later pictures were painted on the Thames. Among the few pictures of other scenery which he exhibited were 'Loch Scavaig, Isle of Skye' (1875), and 'The Alps at Rosenlaui' (1878). In 1888 he startled the public by a new departure, deserting the peaceful reaches of the upper Thames for the London river with its smoky wharves and crowded shipping. The 'Pool of London,' his most ambitious picture, but not a characteristic specimen of his work, was bought out of the funds of the Chantrey Bequest for 2,000l., and is now in the National Gallery of British Art, Millbank. The 'Summons to Surrender,' an episode in the history of the Spanish Armada, was exhibited in 1889. His diploma picture, 'Misty Morning' (1891), a scene at Abinger, was the last of his Surrey landscapes. 'Westminster,' a large view of the houses of parliament from the river (1892) was less successful .than his first London picture. Cole exhibited, in all, seventy-six pictures at the Royal Academy, and forty-eight in Suffolk Street. Many of them have been engraved. He died suddenly, on 6 April 1893, at Little Campden House, Kensington, which had been his residence since 1874. He was married on 7 Nov. 1856 to Mary Anne Chignell.
By his wife, who survives him, he left three daughters and a son, Mr. Reginald Vicat Cole, who is also a landscape painter. Cole abandoned his first name, George, in 1854. His pictures were signed 'Vicat Cole' from that year till 1870, when, on being elected A.R.A., he changed his signature and adopted a monogram formed of the letters 'V. C.'
[Chignell's Life and Paintings of Vicat Cole, R.A., with portrait and many illustrations; Times, 8 April 1893; Daily Graphic, 8 April 1893 (memoir by M. H. Spielmann); Athenæum, 15 April 1893; Graves's Dict. of Artists; private information.]
COLEBROOKE, Sir WILLIAM MACBEAN GEORGE (1787–1870), soldier and colonial governor, son of Colonel Paulet Welbore Colebrooke, R.A. (d. 1816; see Gent. Mag. 1816, ii. 466), and a daughter of Major-general Grant, was born in 1787, and educated at Woolwich, entering the royal artillery as a first lieutenant on 12 Sept. 1803. In 1805 he was ordered to the East Indies first to Ceylon, then in 1806 to Malabar, and back to Ceylon in 1807. He went to India in 1809, and served with the field army there through 1810, becoming a captain on 27 Sept. 1810. He next served in Java, and was wounded in the operations against the Dutch in that island in 1811; here he remained under the British occupation, and was deputy quarter-master-general in 1813, being promoted major on 1 June 1813. He was sent as political agent and commissioner to Palembong in Sumatra, and on to Bengal in 1814. He resumed his old duties in Java in 1815, and was ordered to India on the conclusion of peace and the restoration of Java to the Dutch on 19 Aug. 1816. He served through the Mahratta war of 1817-8, and accompanied the expedition to the Persian Gulf in 1818. He returned to England in 1821.
From 1822 to 1832 Colebrooke was one of the commissioners of what was known as the Eastern inquiry. This was in fact a long and elaborate inquiry into the administration and revenues of Ceylon, where he resided on the business of the inquiry from 1825 to 1831. (For his reports see House of Commons Papers, 1832.) On 9 Sept. 1834 he became lieutenant-governor of the Bahamas, whither he proceeded by way of Jamaica, spending about a month in that island and arriving at Nassau on a ship-of-war on 26 Feb. 1835. His first speech to the assembly was on 7 April 1835. He administered the colony during the days when slavery gave way to the apprenticeship system prior to its final abolition, and he showed himself appreciative of the problems which he was called upon to solve. On 13 Feb. 1837 he was gazetted as governor of the Leeward Islands, being at the time on leave in England. He assumed the government of Antigua and the other islands on 11 May 1837, and one of his earliest official acts was the proclamation of Queen Victoria. In this government, as in the Bahamas, he was anxious to improve education and reform prison discipline; he also urged the restoration of the old general council of the Leewards. On 25 July 1840 he left Antigua for Liverpool, and after an extended leave was on 26 March 1841 made lieutenant-governor of New Brunswick. Here his tenure of office was uneventful, the question of the Maine boundary being the chief public matter affecting the colony at that time; he did, however, suggest a special scheme for colonisation, which had no practical results. On 9 Nov. 1846 he became colonel in the army,
