Richmond Beetham (1832–1912) was a British-born painter and magistrate.[1] He spent most of his life living in New Zealand.

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Early life

Richmond Beetham was born in 1832 in Horncastle, England. He was the eldest son of Mary Beetham (née Brosley) and the portrait painter William Beetham.[2] He attended the Elizabethan Foundation School. In the mid-1850s, he moved to Victoria, before moving to Wellington, New Zealand in 1859, where his parents had also moved.[1][3]

Life in New Zealand

In 1862, he attained his first job as a public servant, working as a Receiver of Land Revenue in the Otago goldfields.[3] In 1863 he married Lucelle Frances Swainson, the daughter of naturalist and artist William John Swainson.[3] That same year, he was appointed as a stipendiary magistrate in Queenstown, and later Napier and Timaru.[2] Eventually, he was moved to Christchurch in 1881, where he continued to work until his retirement in May 1903.[3]

Artist

Like his father, Beetham was a painter. Throughout the 1880s and 1890s, he exhibited his works in New Zealand and abroad – including at the 1886 Colonial and Indian Exhibition in London, and the 1889–90 New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition in Dunedin.[2][4][5] He also exhibited his works at the Canterbury Society of Arts from 1881 to 1893, where he also served on the committee and as President.[1]

Later life

Beetham later moved to Masterton, where he died in 1912.[2]

Art works

• The Roman Catholic Mission, Apia, Samoa in the collection of Alexander Turnbull Library

References