biography of George BECK (c.1748-1812)

Birth place: Ellford, England

Death place: Lexington, KY

Addresses: Itinerant active in Baltimore; Cincinnati; Phila.; Western NY state; Pittsburgh, PA; Lexington, KY

Profession: Landscape painter, art teacher

Exhibited: Royal Academy, London (1790); PAFA (1811-14, his Kentucky views were shown in 1813 and 1814, after his death)

Work: Mount Vernon (views of the Potomac), Va.; Md. Hist. Society; Colonial Williamsburg, VA

Comments: He was one of the earliest academically-trained landscape painters in America. Only three others ó Wm. Groombridge, Francis Guy, and William Winstanley ó were dedicated to the landscape during the turn of the 18th century. Born in 1748 or 1750, he exhibited in London before coming with his wife Mary to the U.S. in the early 1790s. After arriving at Norfolk, VA, in 1795, the couple went to Baltimore, where he worked for the next several years (see Mary Beck's entry for her activities as artist and teacher). His most significant works during this period were two views (c.1796) of the Potomac River which he sold to George Washington for his Mount Vernon home. Other paintings include a view of Baltimore from Howards Park (Md. Hist. Soc.). Beck also worked in Cincinnati for some time in the 1790s. Both Clark, Ohio Art and Artists, and Knittle, Early Ohio Taverns, listed a George Jacob Beck who did sign, barge, and other ornamental work in Ohio. He was also said to have decorated furniture on General Wilkinson's barge/luxury liner on the Ohio/Mississippi River and to have resided at Menessier's tavern (owned by wife Mary's father) in Cincinnati). It is likely that Beck was traveling between Baltimore and Cincinnati during these years. The Becks lived in Philadelphia from 1798-1804. In the latter year George toured the Western part of New York state and painted a view of Niagara Falls. He was in Pittsburgh in 1804 and painted views of the city and of the Monongahela Valley, subsequently going on to Lexington (KY). He seems to have traveled back and forth between the Philadelphia area and Lexington over the next several years as he painted a view of Wright's Ferry on the Pennsylvania's Susquehanna in 1808 and was listed in both Philadelphia and Lexington directories (in the Phila. Dir., 1805 to 1807 and in the Lexington directory in 1806). From 1807 he made his home in Lexington, where he advertised as a portraitist but was also involved in opening a preparatory school with his wife Mary, which finally opened in 1811.

Sources: G&W; Pleasants, George Beck" and "Four Late Eighteenth Century Anglo-American Landscape Painters," the latter with checklist and 3 repros.; Phila. CD 1798, 1800, 1802-03, 1805-07; Prime, II, 44; Graves, Dictionary; Stokes, Historical Prints; Mulkearn, "Pittsburgh in 1806," Dunlap, History, II, 226; Davidson, I, 385; Rutledge, PA; Flexner, The Light of Distant Skies, biblio., 258; Clark, Ohio Art and Artists; Knittle, Early Ohio Taverns. More recently, see Hageman, 114; Baigell, Dictionary; Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 1: 284, 321, 323, 341; vol. 2: 155; 300 Years of American Art, 59 (repro.) "