wife Rita or Ruth. Beetham's portraits of Māori preceded those of C. F. Goldie and Gottfried Lindauer and many commissions followed with the Māori noting Beetham’s accurate painting of the Tā moko. Beetham painted the Māori rangatira chiefs in Regency style to indicate class and status. Most of the Māori sitters in Beetham's portraits are pictured in formal European dress as many of the younger chiefs had grown up among pakeha and adopted their European dress and hairstyles. Beetham rarely dated or signed his portraits, which was a common practise amongst portrait artists of his era. Beetham’s portraits were popular among Māori and pakeha alike, and his paintings of social groups, urban and rural leaders, children and family groups, provide a fascinating light on social as well as political interactions of the day and the early settlement history of the wider Wellington region. Set during the aftermath of the New Zealand Company and the early provincial era, Beetham's portrait paintings featured the eminent movers of the day, such as the son of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and William Mein Smith the Surveyor General of the New Zealand Company. Beetham also painted the portrait of Archdeacon Henry Williams (missionary) who translated the Treaty of Waitangi for the British Crown into Te Reo Māori language. Henry's son T.C. Williams was married to Beetham's daughter Anne. The controversy and implications surrounding the sale of Wellington land between the Māori and the early European settlers is captured in Beetham's nationally significant painting Dr. Featherston and the Maori Chiefs, Wi Tako and Te Puni (1857–58). This features the portraits of Dr. Isaac Featherston and the Māori Rangatira Chiefs Wi Tako Ngātata and Honiana Te Puni (paramount chief of Te Whanganui-a-Tara , Wellington Harbour) and is housed in the permanent collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in Wellington. Beetham painted little after the late 1860s, after which he turned to poetry and to establishing a more secure future for the arts in his adopted country. In 1882 Beetham founded the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts in Wellington and as chair of the Association he formed the objective to promote and encourage fine arts in New Zealand. He also served as President of the Academy. William Beetham died in Wellington on 3 August 1888 and is buried with his wife at the Bolton Street Memorial Park in Wellington, NZ. The first major survey