Gavin Hamilton

Born Murdieston, Lothian, 1723; died Rome, 4 Jan 1798.

Scottish painter, archaeologist and dealer, active in Italy. He was educated at Glasgow University and in 1748 arrived in Rome to study portrait painting under Agostino Masucci. He lodged with the architects James Stuart and Nicholas Revett; they probably encouraged him to visit Herculaneum and the recently discovered archaeological site of Pompeii, which had a profound effect on his subsequent career. Convinced that ‘the ancients have surpassed the moderns, both in painting and sculpture’, Hamilton undertook a systematic study of Classical antiquities during the 1750s and 1760s. In 1751 he was briefly in Scotland, where he painted a full-length portrait of Elizabeth Gunning, Duchess of Hamilton (Lennoxlove, Lothian), in a conventional style derived from van Dyck. He returned to Rome in 1752 and remained there, with the exception of short visits to England, for the rest of his life. In 1755 he was introduced by Anton Raphael Mengs to Johann Joachim Winckelmann, who was to become one of the leading theorists of Neo-classicism. In the same year Hamilton entertained Robert Adam (i), who studied in Rome from 1755 to 1757. He was to know and encourage almost all the British artists who worked in Rome during the second half of the 18th century. Henry Fuseli, who was not an uncritical admirer, wrote of Hamilton in 1805, ‘however eminent his talents or other qualities were, they were excelled by the liberality, benevolence and humanity of his character’.

In 1758 Hamilton painted Robert Wood and James Dawkins Discovering Palmyra (U. Glasgow, Hunterian A.G.). The two explorers are shown, incongruously, in Roman togas, although their entourage wear contemporary dress. Two years later, encouraged by Nathaniel Dance, he painted his first true history painting, Andromache Bewailing the Death of Hector (untraced; engraved by Domenico Cunego). The subject, taken from Greek legend, was praised by Winckelmann and much admired when the picture was shown at the Society of Artists in London in 1762. The composition reveals a debt to Nicolas Poussin and to Classical reliefs, which also provided authentic sources for the architecture, dress and accessories. This was the first painting of Hamilton’s ‘great plan in life’, a series of Homeric subjects executed for different patrons over a period of 15 years during the 1760s and 1770s. This first series (a second was painted in the 1780s) also includes Hector Taking Leave of Andromache (Lennoxlove, on loan to U. Glasgow, Hunterian A.G.). Hamilton commissioned an engraving of each picture from Domenico Cunego, which allowed wide circulation and greatly increased his influence. In addition to his Homeric subjects he drew upon Roman history for one of his most influential paintings, Brutus Promising to Avenge the Death of Lucretia (1763; London, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane), which was to inspire indirectly Fuseli’s Oath of the Rutli (1778; Zurich, Rathaus) and Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii (1784; Paris, Louvre). A rare subject from Scottish history, the Abdication of Mary Queen of Scots (exh. RA 1776; U. Glasgow, Hunterian A.G.), was commissioned by James Boswell. Il Penseroso and L’Allegro (both untraced; engraved 1768) are the earliest Neo-classical works inspired by the poetry of John Milton.

Hamilton’s history paintings were intended to stir noble and universal emotions and exhibit the qualities of calmness (which Winckelmann thought the chief characteristic of Greek art), nobility and lack of the particular so admired by contemporary theorists. Stylistically they owe a compositional debt to Poussin, while Hamilton’s palette reveals the influence of 17th-century Bolognese painters. The figures are often smooth to the point of blandness, a quality thought at the time to be typical of Classical art as exemplified in the Apollo Belvedere, which Hamilton, in common with Winckelmann and Joshua Reynolds, greatly admired. His second Homeric series, commissioned by Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese, coincided with his decoration in 1782–4 of a room in the Villa Borghese with scenes from the Story of Paris and Helen. The ceiling panels remain in the villa, three large wall panels are in the Museo di Roma, Palazzo Braschi.

Hamilton never painted an uncommissioned work, and his prices were high: Achilles Lamenting the Death of Patroclus cost Sir James Grant £300 in the early 1760s. He nevertheless augmented his income by dealing. From the early 1760s he acquired and sold Italian paintings, travelling with a copyist to replace the religious works that he bought. His greatest coups were the purchases of Raphael’s Ansidei Madonna in 1764 and Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks in 1785 (both now London, N.G.). In 1773 he published Schola italica picturae, a textless volume of 40 engravings of 16th- and 17th-century Italian paintings, designed to form taste and stimulate trade. From the late 1760s Hamilton also undertook archaeological excavations. The most important and lucrative of these was that of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (1769–71), where the finds included the Warwick Vase (Glasgow, Burrell Col.) purchased by Sir William Hamilton, and the Newdigate Candelabrum (Oxford, Ashmolean). The sale of the candelabrum involved the collaboration of Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who restored and published the piece before its purchase in 1775. Hamilton made a profit of £2000 from his three years’ work at Hadrian’s Villa. Despite the great success of his history paintings he continued to paint the occasional portrait. The 8th Duke of Hamilton with Dr John Moore and Ensign Moore (Lennoxlove, Lothian), completed in 1777, is particularly successful. The painting owes a debt to Pompeo Batoni but has an individual naturalism. His other late portraits—Emma Hart, Lady Hamilton as a Sibyl (priv. col.) and Lady Hamilton as Hebe (priv. col.; version, Burghley House, Cambs), both painted in 1786—were inspired not only by Emma Hart’s beauty but also by his own friendship with Sir William Hamilton. In 1779 Hamilton met the Venetian sculptor Antonio Canova newly arrived in Rome and was instrumental in persuading him to abandon Rococo for the more restrained Neo-classical style in which he was to excel. Although Hamilton’s only identifiable pupil was David Allan, his encouragement assisted artists in Rome for over 30 years, and the example of his paintings inspired artists of his own and younger generations throughout Europe.

David Rodgers. "Hamilton, Gavin." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T036386 (accessed May 1, 2012).