George Keate

George Keate (1729–1797) was an English poet and writer. He was a versatile author, also known as an artist, who travelled and became a friend of Voltaire.

Life He was son of George Keate of Isleworth, Middlesex, who married Rachel Kawolski, daughter of Count Christian Kawolski. He was born at Trowbridge in Wiltshire, where his father had property, on 30 November 1729 (according to Daniel Lysons, his baptism was not entered in the Isleworth register until 29 November 1730). Together with Gilbert Wakefield, William Hayley, Francis Maseres, and others, he was educated by the Rev. Richard Wooddeson of Kingston upon Thames.

On leaving school Keate was articled as clerk to Robert Palmer, steward to the Duke of Bedford. He entered the Inner Temple in 1751, was called to the bar in 1753, and made bencher of his inn in 1791, but never practised the law. Keate's money came from the dozens of houses that his family owned in Whitechapel. Eight years after his death the income was worth £700 per year.

For some years Keate lived abroad, mainly at Geneva, where he met Voltaire, and in 1755 he was at Rome. After settling in England Keate began to write. He was in turn poet, naturalist, antiquary, and artist. He was elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London and Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766.

Fanny Burney describes Keate in her Early Diary, especially his habit of talking about his own works. Other stories of Keate are in Richard Brinsley Peake's Memoirs of the Colman Family, and Mary Delany in her Autobiography describes visiting his museum in 1779. (with a supplement by John Pearce Hockin in 1803), including in an abridged version, and was translated into French (1793) and German (1800). The French translation has been attributed to Mirabeau.

Some of Keate's poems are in George Pearch's Collection, iii. 269–74; and he wrote prologues and epilogues for the dramatic representations at Newcome's School in Hackney, besides adapting Voltaire's Sémiramis for the stage. Keate also contributed "Observations on some Roman Earthenware" to Archæologia. vi. 125–9.

Between 1766 and 1789 Keate exhibited six pictures at the Society of Artists and thirty at the Royal Academy. His correspondence with Voltaire and Edward Young went to the British Museum and are now part of the British Library collections (Add MSS 30991–30992).

Family Keate married in February 1769 Jane Catharine, daughter of Joseph Hudson, who had been Dutch consul at Tunis, and only sister of Sir Charles Grave Hudson, bart., of Wanlip, Leicestershire. Their issue was one daughter, Georgiana Jane Keate afterwards Mrs. Henderson (1770–1850), who exhibited four pictures at the Society of Artists in 1791, and painted from memory a portrait of Prince Lee Boo, fifteen months after his death, for her father's account of the Pelew islands. She married, on 9 June 1796, John Henderson, B.C.L. (1764–1843), of Adelphi Terrace, London, one of the early patrons of Thomas Girtin and J. M. W. Turner, and himself an amateur artist. Their children were Charles Cooper Henderson, John Henderson, and three daughters, who died unmarried. There are portraits of the mother by Angelica Kauffman and John Russell, R.A. She died 8 January 1850, and was buried in her husband's grave at Kensal Green Cemetery.