George Vicat Cole was the eldest son of the landscape painter George Cole (1810–83) and Eliza Vicat. He worked in his father’s studio in Portsmouth copying, in black and white, engravings after Turner, Constable and Cox. He accompanied his father on sketching tours, visiting the Moselle region in 1851. His work was first exhibited at the British Institute in 1852, and later that year his family moved to London. He married Mary Ann Chignell in 1856. In 1853 two of his works were accepted by the Royal Academy, where he continued to exhibit until 1892. He was also a regular exhibitor at the Society of British Artists at Suffolk Street, of which he became a member in 1858. He was elected Associate of the Royal Academy in 1870 and a full member in 1880,.
Cole was primarily a painter of the English landscape, specializing in southern harvesting and river scenes. His work of the 1860s, such as Harvest Time(1860; Bristol, Museum & Art Gallery), acknowledged the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but later landscapes, for example Cattle Watering, 1880, essayed a broader treatment. From 1863 to 1867 he lived at Hombury Hill, Surrey, moving to Kensington in 1868 as his financial success increased. During the 1870s he produced large landscapes of subjects on the river Arun, the culmination being Arundel (1877; Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales). In 1879, William Agnew commissioned a series of 25 views of the Thames, from its source to the sea, for engraving. The project remained uncompleted but marked Cole’s almost exclusive concentration on Thames scenes, mainly rural in character but culminating in Westminster (1892; London, Guildhall Art Gallery) and The Pool of London (1888; London, Tate Gallery), the latter of which was commended by Gladstone and purchased for the Chantrey Bequest. His son Rex Vicat Cole (1870–1940) was also a landscape painter and educationalist.