William Bate, Miniature Painter
(fl. 1799-1845)
Miniature Painter
From A Dictionary of Irish Artists 1913
He belonged to a family who, for two or three generations, were watchmakers and jewellers in Dublin, and was perhaps a son of William Bate, jeweller, who died in 1783. In the same year the marriage of a William Bate, described as a watchmaker and artist, is recorded. Very little information can be gathered as to his career; he appears to have had a considerable practice both in Dublin and London, and was an exhibitor at the Royal Academy from 1799 to 1827. In 1817, his address being given as "Dublin," he exhibited a miniature of Mrs. Musters, and in 1819 he had a miniature in the exhibition in Hawkins Street, Dublin. He held the appointment of"Painter in Enamel to the Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of York." Bate died in or before 1845, for on the 10th June of that year a sale, by direction of his executors, was held in Dublin of his pictures, china, enamels, miniatures, etc. In the catalogue the following miniatures by Bate himself are entered: Duke of Schomberg, Anne Hyde, Duchess of York, unfinished, Primate Robinson, after Reynolds, Miss O'Neill, Mrs. Woffington, Handel, Napoleon, George IV, Lord Byron, unfinished, Duke of York, Duchess of Kent, after Beechey, C. J. Fox, Nell Gwynn, and many others unnamed.