English painter and illustrator. The son of one of the assistants of Robert Adam (1728-1792), he was sent to Rome to be trained as an architectural draughtsman. He studied under Antonio Zucchi (who was later Adam's chief decorative painter), possibly in Rome from 1766 and in London from 1768. At the Royal Academy Schools from 1769, Hamilton developed into a figure painter and exhibited portraits and subject pictures at the Royal Academy from 1774 to 1801. He became ARA in 1784 and RA in 1789.
Hamilton's most interesting work pertains to the theatre, particularly Shakespearean. His most distinguished large pictures are the 23 he painted for John Boydell's Shakespeare GalleryGLOSSARYan upper story, similar to a tribune, running along the side of a building and open on one side to the interior; in a church (basilica) above the side aisles, over the ambulatory (central-plan building) and also over the west end. The gallery was used to keep certain groups of worshippers apart (women, noblemen).. Also in the 1790s he contributed illustrations to Bowyer's History of England and Thomas Macklin's Bible and British Poets. Nevertheless, his pleasantly plump and youthful figures were better suited to the less pretentious format of book illustration than that of history paintingGLOSSARYPainting concerned with the representation of scenes from the Bible, history (usually classical history), and classical literature. From the Renaissance to the 19th century it was considered the highest form of painting, its subjects considered morally elevating.. His attractive romantic scenes appear in many editions of 18th-century poets as well as in John Bell's second editions of Shakespeare (1786-88) and The British Theatre (1791-97).
Hamilton was capable of being an accomplished draughtsman in a variety of styles; his album of drawings (London, Victoria and Albert Museum) includes work reminiscent of Henry Fuseli and Angelica Kauffmann as well as more distinctive compositions nervously constructed with repeated, scratchy strokes of the pen. His portraits are mostly theatrical and include many of Sarah Siddons; they are curiously stilted, although the John Philip Kemble as Richard III (exhibited at the Royal Academy 1788; private collection) is a fine dramatic pasticheGLOSSARYA work of art using a borrowed style and usually made up of borrowed elements, but not necessarily a direct copy. A pastiche often verges on conscious or unconscious caricature, through its exaggeration of what seems most typical in the original model. of Hogarth's portraitGLOSSARYThe Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello. The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90). of David Garrick in the same role (1745; Liverpool, Walker Art Gallery).
