Hugh Douglas Hamilton

Cupid and Psyche in the nuptial bower by Hugh Douglas Hamilton. Oil, 1792–93.

Hugh Douglas Hamilton ( – 10 February 1808) was an Irish painter who specialised in portrait painting. He spent considerable periods in London and Rome before 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).

Life Hamilton was born in Crow Street, in Dublin, Ireland, in 1739, the son of a peruke maker. Unfortunately, there is very little concrete evidence of his early life, apart from his own drawings. He studied art under Robert West and James Mannin at the Dublin Society House - and won some early success with crayon and pastel portraits there. He was very adept at building relationships with patrons from the early days, taking up with the famous La Touche banking family of Dublin, who had close ties with the Bank of Ireland.

Very little is known of Hamilton's career between 1756 and 1764, when he moved to London. Hamilton was often overwhelmed with orders, including commissions from the British royal family - such as Queen Charlotte (1764) and others now in the British Royal Collection. He showed with 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 very interested in a softer, more textural form of pastel "fresco", in which he blended crayons and chalk to further the pastel's ability to imitate flesh. occasionally visiting Florence but mainly based in Rome, where he knew Antonio Canova. His with his wife Mary and his daughter Harriott moved with him. On the advice of artist 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 include 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). His portrait of Susan Frances Elizabeth (Anne) Butler (née Wandesford), Countess of Ormonde may be seen at Kilkenny Castle.