• Was a portrait painter.
• He was born in London, the son of a coach painter.
• He studied drawing with William Shipley in the Strand.
• Kettle's first series of portraits appeared in the 1760s.
• His first surviving painting is a self-portrait from 1760.
• In 1762, he worked at restoring Robert Streater's ceiling paintings in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford.
• In 1768, Kettle sailed to India with the British East India Company, landing at Madras, where he remained for two years.
• There, he painted Lord Pigot and Muhammad Ali Khan twice.
• Kettle moved on to Calcutta (now Kolkata) in 1771 and painted Shuja ud-Daula and Dancing-Girl Holding the Stem of a Hookah.
• In 1775, he painted George Bogle, Warren Hastings' emissary to Tibet, in Tibetan dress.
• He took an Indian bibi or mistress and had two daughters by her, Ann and Elizabeth.
• He left India in 1776 for London, traveling on the ship Talbot.
• On his return, he swiftly married Mary "Polly" Paine in 1777.
• The couple had two children, a daughter, Mary, and a son, James.
• He fell into debt, and spent some time in Ireland to escape his financial problems.
• On 9 June 1786 Kettle made his will, giving his address as Brussels, rather than London, possibly to confuse his creditors.
• In 1786 he set out for a return to India.
• His last portrait, The Turkish Janissary of the English Factory, Aleppo, was painted in Aleppo, and he died some time later.
• His will was registered at the British cancellaria in Aleppo on 5 July 1787.
