Ozias Humphrey, R.A. 1742-1810

George Macartney (1737-1806) was born in Ireland and studied at Trinity College, Dublin.  In 1764 he was knighted and appointed envoy-extraordinary to St Petersburg where he concluded a commercial treaty with the Empress Catherine.  In 1775 he was appointed Governor of the Caribbean Islands and in 1779, after Grenada was attacked, he was taken to France as a Prisoner of War.  He was later exchanged and in 1780, at the time of the Mahratta War, he was appointed Governor and President of Fort St George in Madras.  He remained in India until 1786 when he resigned and returned to England. In 1792, he was sent as Ambassador to China, the first British embassy to that country. He travelled to China with a large contingent of soldiers, scientists, secretaries, and artists and although they did not succeed in their primary goal of securing permission to have a British minister in China, they collected valuable information relating to conditions in China, trade, customs, and practices. On 30th December 1796 he was appointed Governor of the newly captured colony of the Cape of Good Hope, which he resigned on account of ill health two years later. He died at Chiswick on 31st May 1806.

A portrait of Macartney in conference with his secretary, Sir George Leonard Staunton, painted by Lemuel F.Abbott is in the National Portrait Gallery.  His library and manuscripts were sold in 1854 and many important manuscripts are now in the British Museum.  A cenotaph was erected to him in Lissanoure Church, Ireland, with an epitaph by George Henry Glasse