A Life in Portraiture Michael Keeling was a British painter whose life spanned the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Born in 1750, he operated during a period of significant transition in British art, contributing to the visual record of his era through his brushwork. His career was defined by a commitment to capturing the likenesses of his contemporaries, moving through a world of shifting social hierarchies and changing aesthetic tastes. His work often intersected with the lives of the landed gentry and the nobility. He was tasked with documenting the faces of those who held i…