Explore: Thomas Beach

(1738 - 1806)

Thomas Beach, portrait painter, was born in Abbey Milton in Dorset. He studied at St. Martin’s Lane Academy in London and, from 1760 to 1762, with Sir Joshua Reynolds. By 1772 he had moved to Bath, where his success was said to have driven his rival Joseph Wright of Derby from the town in 1777. Beach was noted for the strong likenesses of his portraits. His friend, the diarist Horace Walpole, wrote that they ‘never require the horrid question of - Pray whose is that Sir? - They always explain themselves’. Beach retired to Dorchester in Dorset, where he continued to paint until at least 1802. He died in Dorset in 1806.