Hugh Douglas Hamilton (Dublin 1740-1808)


Portrait of Emilia Olivia, Duchess of Leinster signed 'H.Hamilton Pinx' (lower left)pastel on paper82 x 64.2cm (32 5/16 x 25 1/4in).
|ProvenanceThe sitter and thence by descent to the present ownerLiteratureNotes on the pictures & at Carton, Kilkea Castle, 13 Dominick Street, Dublin and 6 Carlton House Terrace, London, 1885, p. 39 (as in the Duke's Dressing Room)W.G. Strickland, 'Hugh Douglas Hamilton, portrait-painter', in Walpole Society, vol. II, 1912-13, p. 108B. FitzGerald, 'Carton', in Country Life, 14 November 1936, p. 519, ill., fig. 10 A. Crookshank, 'Irish artists and their portraiture', in Connoisseur, December 1969, vol. 172, pp. 240-43, ill., fig. 9W.G. Strickland, A Dictionary of Irish Artists, Shannon, 1969, vol. I, p. 441N.Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, London, 2006, p. 228, illN.Jeffares, Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, online, no. J.375.1647The Hon. Emilia Olivia Usher (c.1755-1798) was the daughter of Lord St George of Headford Castle, Co. Galway, and she married William Robert FitzGerald (1749-1804), 2nd Duke of Leinster, in 1775. Her husband had inherited debts which her dowry of £68,000 did much to alleviate, but theirs was by no means simply a marriage of convenience, they are known to have been genuinely fond of each other and in due course they had ten children together. The young couple makes an appearance in one of the set of four demesne landscapes of Carton painted by Thomas Roberts in 1774-6, The sheet of water shows them approaching a boat in the idyllic park created by William's father in the style of Capability Brown (see: W. Laffan & B. Rooney, Thomas Roberts, Tralee, 2009, p.277, cat. 64-67). They most probably commissioned the pair of full-length pastel portraits from Hugh Douglas Hamilton, of which the present lot is one, in the late 1770s. The Duke is shown standing beside draped columns and opening a book of Leinster estate maps in his library at Carton, by contrast his wife is standing beside a balustrade on a terrace with a park as backdrop. The two portraits are recorded as hanging in the Duke's Dressing Room in the Carton inventory of 1885 (p.39) and they remain among the most spectacular examples of Hamilton's pastels. The Duke was a major patron of Hugh Douglas Hamilton, no fewer than 38 pastel portraits were listed in Carton and other FitzGerald properties, 28 of which hung as a display around the walls of the Study. The Duchess also sat to Hamilton for an oil portrait, on panel, 25.1 x 20.9 cm., that was sold at Christie's New York, 26 January 2012, lot 279.Hugh Douglas Hamilton began his career apprenticed to a pattern-drawer in Dublin; however, soon after his move to London in 1764 he began to specialise in small-scale oval pastel portraits on paper which clearly enjoyed some success as in 1769 he was commissioned to draw King George III and four of his sons. Hamilton's pastels are recognisable for the detail and modelling they convey despite their small size and for the hatching and overdrawn outlines that he added in fine graphite. By the late 1770s he was back in Ireland and was producing pastel portraits of a number of aristocratic patrons including the Duke of Leinster. In 1779 he left for Italy, spending 13 years in Rome and Florence portraying many of the visiting grand-tourists both in pastel and oil. One of the most impressive pastels from this period was that which he sent to the Royal Academy for the 1791 exhibition showing his friend Antonio Canova (1757-1822) with Henry Tresham (1751-1791) and Canova's sculpture Cupid and Psyche.