WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 May 2025 FROM 6PM

30 17 Letitia Marion Hamilton RHA (1878- 1964) HILL FAIR AT ACHILL ISLAND oil on canvas signed lower right; titled on label on reverse 20.25 by 26.50in. (51.4 by 67.3cm) Frame Size: 27.5 by 33.5 (69.9 by 85.1cm) Provenance: Denis Drum Auctioneers, Malahide, Co. Dublin,17 October 2002; Whence purchased by the present owner Born at Hamwood Estate Co. Meath, Letitia Hamilton came from a family of pioneering female artists, her great-grandmother Caroline Hamilton (1771-1861) was a celebrated artist, as was her sister Eva (1876-1960) and cousin, watercolourist Rose Barton RWS (1856-1929). She studied at the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin under William Orpen and abroad in Belgium and London encountering Impressionism for the first time in northern France in 1910. She was a prolific painter exhibiting more than 200 paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) of which she became a member in 1943 and a similar number at the Watercolour Society of Ireland (WCSI) over a 60 year period. In 1920 she was a founding member of the Society of Dublin Painters - a forum where more experimental artists could show their work - alongside Paul and Grace Henry, Mary Swanzy, Jack Butler Yeats and others. Hamilton’s first encounters with the west of Ireland came in her early forties and can be traced to 1922 when she visited Sligo 1, “...[p]ossibly living together with [her sister] Eva who was based there temporarily...Trips to Kerry, Connemara, Achill and Slieve Donard followed.”2 In 1929 she first showed a Connemara landscape at the RHA and with travel to continental Europe too dangerous during the years of WWII, Roundstone and the west played a more significant role in her work. Group scenes were a constant source of inspiration to Hamilton whether at home or abroad. Examples of flower markets from Amsterdam to Dubrovnik, market days in Monasterevin or Mitchelstown and fairs in Roundstone, Clifden, Castlepollard or Portarlington among many others can all be found in her oeuvre. She was adept at capturing the hustle and bustle of such occasions and the characters who attended them. In Hill Fair at Achill Island the viewer joins the busy scene entering on an uneven path between two large limestone rocks behind an animal that appears to be laden with wares. To the right foreground a black horse with a white blaze stands quietly apart. Hamilton’s work regularly features horses and hunts and her familiarity with this subject can be felt here. To the centre of the composition men and women interact with each other and particular attention is paid to their clothing. The men are dressed in shades of grey or brown with their heads covered by flat caps. The women inject the canvas with colour and pattern and recall Paul Henry’s description of Achill islanders in his autobiography An Irish Portrait, “The women’s dresses always supplied a rich note of colour; most of them wore flannel homespun. This coarse material dyed vermilion, after wear and weather and washing, turned a variety of tones... Some of the more coquettish stitched a band of black velvet an inch or two from the ground, or sewed black velvet diamonds round the edge.”3 In Hill Fair at Achill Island Hamilton balances the reds and blues in the composition by adding accents of pinks, mauves and purples elsewhere in the canvas, hues that recall the chalky pastel shades of her Venetian paintings and draw the eye from the rocks in the foreground through to the mountains and the sky beyond. Adelle Hughes April 2025 1 Hamilton must have visited county Mayo c.1919 as the WCSI Index of Exhibitors records Hollymount, Co. Mayo (WCSI, no. 134, £5-5-0) 2 Odlum, Stephen, Eva, Letitia and the Hamilton Sisters - Class, Gender and Art, Zest Publications, 2020, p.73 3 Henry, Paul, An Irish Portrait, The Autobiography of Paul Henry, B.T. Batsford Ltd., 1951, p.51 €15,000-€20,000 (£12,710-£16,950 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot17