Author: Keate, George
Biography:
KEATE, George (1729-97: ODNB)
Keate was born to independent means: his father was George Keate of Isleworth and his mother Rachel was a daughter of Count Christian Kawolski. He was educated at Kingston grammar school and trained to be a lawyer. Though he was called to the bar in London in 1753 and established chambers at the Inner Temple which he kept for the rest of his life, he never practised law. Once qualified, he embarked on a Grand Tour of France and Italy in 1754-7, celebrating some of the highlights of the trip in verse and prose later. His poem The Alps (1763) is an early example of the "mountain glory" theme; his 1768 epistle to Voltaire, whom he had visited at Ferney, commemorated perhaps the defining relationship of his life. He married Jane Catherine Hudson at St. Luke's, Chelsea, in 1769 and settled with her into a house in Charlotte St., Bloomsbury, which his architect friend Robert Adam helped them to renovate. They had one daughter, who as Georgiana Jane Henderson became a well known painter. Keate painted himself and in 1761 had been a founder member of the Society of Artists, leaving it in 1768 to join the founders of the Royal Academy. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Society of Antiquaries. His most frequently reprinted book is a prose Account of the Pelew Islands (1788). He died at home in Bloomsbury and was buried at Isleworth, as was his wife three years later. (ODNB 30 Mar. 2021; ancestry.com 30 Mar. 2021)