Gavin Hamilton

Born: Murdieston, Scotland, 1723

Died: Rome, 4 January 1798

Nationality: Scottish


Works by this Artist

Wood and Dawkins Discovering Palmyra
Gavin Hamilton, 1758

Studies

Glasgow University (1740s); with portrait painter Agostino Masucci (from 1748, Rome)

Career

painter, art and antiquities dealer, archaeologist

Travels

1748: moves to Rome. Friend of Anton Raphael Mengs, Heinrich Fuseli and other artists working in Rome

Commissions from

Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese

Important Artworks

Brutus Promising to Avenge the Death of Lucretia, 1763 (Drury Lane Theater, London)

The Oath of Brutus, 1767 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven)

Agrippina Landing at Brindisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, c. 1765 (Tate, London)

Venus Promising Paris Helen as his Wife, 1782-84 (Palazzo Braschi, Rome)

Portraits of Hamilton

Irish sculptor Christopher Hewetson (1737-1798), also residing in Rome, made a plaster bust of Hamilton in 1784 (University Art Collection, Glasgow).

Readings

Cassidy, Brendan. Gavin Hamilton (1723-1798): Artist, Antiquarian and Art Dealer in Eighteenth-Century Rome. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010

Irwin, David. “Gavin Hamilton: Archaeologist, Painter, and Dealer,” The Art Bulletin, vol. 44, no. 2 (June 1962): 87-102

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