IMPORTANT IRISH ART 25 MAY 2026

58 33 Letitia Marion Hamilton RHA (1878- 1964) GONDOLAS ON THE GRAND CANAL, VENICE oil on canvas signed with initials lower right 19.75 by 23.75in. (50.2 by 60.3cm) Frame Size: 24 by 27.5in. (61 by 69.9cm) Provenance: Family of the artist 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 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. By this time matters of light and shade and a preoccupation with texture are trademarks of her work. Letitia Hamilton travelled to Venice for the first time in the autumn of 1923 and during the 1930s made regular visits to that city, Florence, Siena and the northern Italian lakes.1 In his text, Eva, Letitia and The Hamilton Sisters: Class, Gender and Art, author Stephen Odlum notes that during this period Letitia travelled with her sister Eva and the artist Ada Longfield of Longfield House, Cork, who offered to share her apartment and studio in Venice with them. Odlum writes that Letitia owned her own gondola, which she used as a floating studio, and that the Hamilton scrapbooks from Hamwood (c.1907-1960) had “...a number of pages of photographs and postcards of the city that served as inspiration for her paintings of that location.”2 A large number of paintings (54 in total) both in oil and watercolour by Letitia and Eva were exhibited under the general title ‘Venice’ in an exhibition in 1924 at the St. Stephen’s Green Gallery, Dublin however the inclusion of either of the present examples in this particular show cannot be confirmed. Santa Maria della Salute, commonly known as La Salute, is a minor basilica located at the Punta della Dogana in the Dorsoduro sestiere of the city of Venice. Letitia Hamilton’s view of the Salute (lot 32) follows in the footsteps of artists Canaletto, Guardi, Turner and Singer Sargent all of whom captured this iconic view of the floating city. The cut-off composition of the painting gives a sense of immediacy to the scene with vessels both entering and exiting the foreground. Hamilton’s lived experience of the city can be felt in its detail; the huddled trio of tanned fisherman, the inclusion of the boat’s name and, in the other vessel, where a man hunches over, absorbed in his task. The first example of a Venetian scene exhibited by Hamilton with the WCSI was in 1926, titled Salute, Venice (no. 144, priced £8-8-0). Gondolas on the Grand Canal, Venice (lot 33) depicts the steps of a gondola boarding point where four boats are stationed. One is manned by a gondolier dressed in traditional straw hat and red neckerchief standing on the stern of the boat facing the bow. Hamilton uses a dark outline here to ‘push forward’ the vessels within the composition and draws attention to their ornate features; the férro (detailing at the front of the boat) and the fórcolas (carved wooden rests or oarlocks). The belfry and spire of St Mark’s Campanile - the tallest structure in Venice - punctuates the pale skyline while the dark lamppost on the quayside adds balance to the composition. Both lots have the desirable provenance of coming from the collection of the artist’s family. Adelle Hughes April 2026 ________________________________________ 1 Odlum, Stephen, Eva, Letitia and the Hamilton Sisters - Class, Gender and Art, Zest Publications, 2020, p.52 2 Ibid. €15,000-€20,000 (£13,040-£17,390 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot33