Hugh Douglas Hamilton: life and works

Hugh Douglas Hamilton (c. 1740 – 10 February 1808) was an Irish portrait-painter. He spent considerable periods in London and Rome past returning to Dublin in the early 1790s. Until the mid-1770s he worked mostly in pastel. His style influenced the English painter Lewis Vaslet (1742–1808).

Hamilton was born in Crow Street, in Dublin, Ireland, in 1740, the son of a peruke maker. Unfortunately there is very Tiny concrete evidence for his in advance life, apart from his own drawings. He studied art below Robert West and James Mannin at the Dublin Society House – and won some early talent with crayon and pastel portraits there. He was very talented at building relationships with patrons from the at the forefront days, taking occurring with the well-known La Touche banking intimates of Dublin, who had close ties subsequently the Bank of Ireland.

Very little is known of Hamilton’s career amongst 1756 and 1764, when he moved to London. Hamilton found good success in London through his pastel oval portraits, portraying royalty, politicians and celebrities of the day through this medium. Hamilton was often overwhelmed behind orders, including commissions from the British royal family – such as Queen Charlotte (1764) and others now in the British Royal Collection. He showed later the Society of Artists and the Free Society of Artists from the mid-1760s to the mid-1770s. From the mid-1770s on, Hamilton became extremely interested in a softer, more textural form of pastel “fresco”, in which he blended crayons and chalk to supplementary the pastel’s talent to distress flesh.

In 1779 he travelled to Italy, where he remained for the neighboring twelve years, occasionally visiting Florence but mainly based in Rome, where he knew Antonio Canova. On the advice of performer John Flaxman Hamilton turned to oil painting, and achieved great success with small oval portraits of Irish and British visitors. His portraits of this period count up those of Dean Kirwan (displayed at the Royal Dublin Society), George John, 2nd Earl Spencer, Countess Cowper (1787), and the exiled Charles Edward Stuart ( Lord Edward, 1785).

In 1791 Hamilton returned to Dublin, where he died. In 1796 he painted Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the Irish revolutionary.

Hamilton was best known for his pastel oval portraits depicting the head and shoulders of the sitter. These pastels were working and affordable, costing more or less six guineas apiece. They became certainly popular throughout Europe. For these oval portraits, Hamilton used handmade cream or off-white paper, usually medium in thickness, that was finished as soon as gelatin glue. While it is unclear as to how Hamilton prepared his paper for the pastels, it is thought that he did not use preparatory drawings and that the portraits were usually completed in one sitting from life. This enthusiasm and gift was necessary to ensure a steady flow of clientele, as Hamilton was unquestionably pressed later commissions for these portraits.

While there is no enduring documentary evidence upon Hamilton’s pastel technique, through near examination of his works, researchers and conservators have been skillful to discern some of his technique. Hamilton most likely applied each announce to the portrait separately before blending to avoid dulling the image, using the pastel sticks both wet and dry. When drawing a face, he first outlined the head and shoulders in a well-ventilated tone, then other the features of the slant in a “faint carmine tones”. He next blended the tones upon the position using his fingers. After this, the background was filled in using the expansive side of the pastel, avoiding the outline of the face. The total strokes of the pastel were later used to fill in drifting hair and additional details, and graphite was next used to charm in small details such as eyelashes. Hamilton’s technique remained approximately constant throughout his career, influenced by the European tradition and the desire of the market.