Arthur Grote

Arthur Grote (1814–1886) was an English colonial administrator.

Portrait of Arthur Grote by Knight

Life

He was born on 29 November 1814 at Beckenham in Kent, England. He was the son of George Grote (1760–1830), a London banker, and Selina Peckwell (1775-1845) who was the daughter of the Rev. Dr Henry Peckwell (1747-1787) and Bella Blosset of Co. Meath, from a well-connected Huguenot family.[1] His elder brother George Grote (1794–1871) became a distinguished politician and historian of Greece.

He was educated at Haileybury College, and entered the Bengal Civil Service in 1834. Grote was a civil servant employed in Bengal from 1834 to 1868. He was commissioner and member of the Board of Revenue, Calcutta, 1861–8 and president of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1859–62 and 1865.

He held the offices of Chairman of Revenue Board of Bengal, and President of the Royal Agricultural Society of India, and of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. On his return to England in 1868, he became a prominent member of the Linnean Society of London and Royal Asiatic Society, and wrote many papers on Natural History subjects. Mr. Grote was elected a member of the Society of Arts in 1886.

He died on 4 December 1886 at his house in Ovington Square. One of his portraits, painted by Knight, is in the collection of the Asiatic Society, Kolkata.

Notes

  1. ↑ Portrait of Miss Selina Peckwell

References