€310
Star Lot: A charming original Latitia Marion Hamilton RHA (Meath, b.1878 - d.1964) watercolour on paper painting titled Gortnavehy, Millstreet" featuring a rural landscape scene of a lake surrounded by mountains. Delicately rendered in a palette of blues and greens with a pop of magenta in the foreground. Initialed L.M.H lower left and housed in a lacquered and gilt frame. Some foxing to upper left portion. Hamilton is a well loved Irish artist whose work has fetched up to €32,000 at Whyte's.
MM: 56 x 43 cm including frame
Letitia Hamilton, known as May to her family and friends, was born at Hamwood, Co. Meath. Described by Hilary Pyle as a typical ‘horse Protestant’, she enjoyed a privileged start in life: educated at Alexandra College. She studied art under William Orpen at the Dublin Metropolitan School, partly, no doubt, through the influence of her elder cousin Rose Barton, then an established professional artist. In Belgium she studied with Sir Frank Brangwyn; further study ensued at the Slade in London. She began exhibiting with the WCSI in 1902, showing mostly garden scenes in the manner of Mildred Anne Butler, a family friend. In 1910 she painted in northern France, and is thought to have then encountered the work of the Impressionists. Certainly by 1920, at which time she was a founding member of the Dublin Painters Society, her work reveals an interest in matters of light and shade, and a painterly concern for texture. This was to increase over following years, leading to her mature trademark style of chalky pastel colours applied in thick impasto. Her first recorded visit to the West of Ireland was in 1922, when she took a house in Sligo in order to paint. In 1929 she first showed a Connemara landscape at the RHA, but it was not until 1942 that Roundstone began to figure among her painting subjects. In that year she exhibited three Roundstone scenes at the RHA and further works followed every year or two thereafter throughout the forties and fifties. Her final Roundstone subject was exhibited at the RHA the year before her death. There is a video of this lot on our social media pages, Facebook, instagram and tic tok under South Dublin Auction.
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