Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Beechey, George D.

1217801Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 04 — Beechey, George D.1885Robert Edmund Graves

BEECHEY, GEORGE D. (fl. 1817–1855), portrait painter, was a son of Sir William Beechey, R.A. [q.v.], whose profession and style he followed. He exhibited first at the Royal Academy in 1817, and continued to do so through several subsequent years, having many sitters so long as his father's influence lasted; but about 1830 the rapid decline in the number of his commissions induced him to leave England and proceed to Calcutta, whence he sent to the Royal Academy in 1832 a portrait of 'Hinda,' an Indian lady whom he married. He afterwards went to Lucknow, where he attained great celebrity and became court painter and controller of the household to the king of Oudh. He is believed to have been living in India in 1855, and to have died before the mutiny of 1857.

[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878; Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves, 1884.]