Hand-coloured. George Hutchins Bellasis (1778-1822) was a soldier and amateur artist born at Bowness, Westmoreland, who went out to Bombay in 1801, where three of his brothers already were as well as his father, Major-General John Bellasis (1744-1808) who was HEIC army Commander-in-Chief and Colonel of Artillery there. However, he suffered recurring bouts of illness in Bombay in 1802-03, and returned home in the 'Elphinstone', East Indiaman, in August 1804. He became so ill during the voyage that he was forced to disembark at St Helena on 4 November 1804 to recover his health, stayed there for the next eight months and also revisited the island in1812 though the reason why is not yet clear. This print is one derived from his early enforced stay. He later published (in book form plus text) a series of six 'Views of St Helena' engraved in coloured aquatint by Robert Havell (pub. John Tyler, 1815). Bellasis married his longstanding Westmoreland sweetheart in London in November 1805 and, given his medical history, left the army and returned to live at Bowness, where they had six (generally long-lived) children before he himself died there on 4 January 1822, aged 44.
[see http://www.lib.mq.edu.au/digital/lema/biographies/profiles/bellasisgeorge.html] [PvdM 2/12]