1 of 7

Ken Hamilton
With the beauty of her entire heritage. Title - La Espanolita
2011

$7,950List Price

About the Item

Ken Hamilton is one of the most celebrated figurative painters in the British Isles. His jewel-like, character portraits of women have brought him international acclaim. The dimensions given for La Espanolita are the framed dimensions. They are provided for the purpose of computing the shipping cost. The painting dimensions are 12 x 10 inches. The painting comes in a beautifully ornate, gold-colored frame. KEN HAMILTON (British-Irish, born 1956) Ken Hamilton was born to Irish missionary parents in 1956 in the mining town of Jos, Nigeria. He received his early education at boarding school until the age of eleven when his parents decided to transport the family back to Belfast, Northern Ireland. Belfast in the 1960s was a city balancing between a gritty industrial past and an uncertain political future. From its shipyards at Harland Wolff, the great ocean liner Titanic had been launched. It was also a city on the brink of serious social unrest. Against this backdrop, the young Ken Hamilton completed his secondary education, and in 1975 enrolled at the College of Art and Design, Belfast. As sometimes falls to a student of singular vision, the academic milieu of the college seemed not to provide direction for the pursuit of goals that mattered to him. The techniques of the great masters that he hoped to learn were not appreciated, and so the young Hamilton decided to change course. In 1977 he moved to the British mainland and started studying horticulture and landscape design at Merrist Wood College in Surrey. For the next several years, he worked as a landscape designer, a profession that supported his love of nature, harmony, and design. Having found the means to earn a living, his mind began to revisit his original plan to become an artist. Putting behind him his earlier disappointment, in 1990 he took up painting again. His natural curiosity for his subject led him to search in old art books for the key to unlock the mysteries of the old masters. Twelve years later, in 2002, he traveled to Paris to teach himself by first-hand examination the methods of the great European painters. Setting his easel in the grand halls of the Louvre, he painted the works of the French and Spanish masters, Ingres, Le Valentin, and Ribera. The exercise proved to be a watershed experience in his vocation as an artist. Direct observation of the techniques of these painters strengthened his foundation and gave him the confidence he needed to follow his dream to create his own modern masterpieces. Ken Hamilton, the artist, would never again look back. In the art of Ken Hamilton, the principles of the great masters are carefully applied in the making of his portraits. His paintings are built from the ground up through a series of glazes, each thinly laid down, one upon another. Glazes may be best understood as layers of paint that are transparent, but which are tinted by small amounts of pigment. They are made by mixing together a drying oil, a diluting solvent, and a varnish. In the case of Hamilton, the early stages of a painting are executed with a fast-drying paint to model the form and set the overall tonal relationships. Each subsequent glaze dries more slowly and contains less pigment. After each layer has dried, the artist uses a fine abrasive to create a bonding surface for the next layer. Each glaze is formed differently and in the case of Hamilton, their properties have been arrived at over the course of many years of research and experiment. One might fairly inquire as to the reason for this method of painting. The answer lies in the realization that the use of glazes allows for the creation of what are known as ‘optical’ colors. These ‘optical’ colors are what we experience in a painting as the gray of shadow or the flesh tone of skin. They cannot be represented by any color but can be created optically through the layering of glazes. When used successfully, glazes can achieve a luminous glow. The study of the effects of layering is one of the principal occupations of the artist Ken Hamilton. The use of Cremnitz white — paint also used to good effect by the artist Lucien Freud — is favored by Ken Hamilton, due in part to a lessening of the paint’s opacity over time. It is an intriguing prospect to think that a slow-release transparency in the glazes will gradually reveal more of what the artist intended, and that one may be looking at a more, fully realized depiction of his vision at some future date. Ken Hamilton’s paintings are an exercise in high aesthetics. It is hard to explain the life force with which they are imbued merely by pointing to the skillful application of paint onto board. In the physicality of the paintings, one feels surrounded by objects of rare beauty, but something above and beyond that, some higher alchemy seems to inhabit them. They are masterful expressions of the artist’s aesthetic sense, as though he brings to the faces of his models an element of imagination that is not earthbound, but inspired by a higher power. His women seem not to be fixed in any one period. Rather it is as if they are time travelers, who, through the medium of the artist’s palette, live simultaneously in the present, the past, and the future. It is this transcendence of time in the portraits that represents a signature achievement of the artist. The present collection of twelve oil paintings was painted during the years 2011 to 2012. Some of the paintings deal with the human emotions of hope and desire as depicted in ‘Esperance’ and ‘Longing for the Islands.’ Others are inspired by biblical characters, as in the case of the Jewish ‘Esther in Waiting,’ or by characters who played a role in literary history such as ‘Laura,’ unattainable muse of the fourteenth century, Italian poet Francesco Petrarch. Depictions of other characters like the Italian Caravaggist painter, Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1652), one of the first women to gain entry into the Academy of the Arts of Drawing, Florence are also present in the collection. A few of the portraits such as ‘La Espanolita’ or ‘She Speaketh Not’ touch on the idea of impermanence, a recurring theme in the work of the artist, the notion that physical beauty or innocence is fleeting, and that we must honor and pay homage to it, or run the risk of watching it disappear before our eyes forever. Ken Hamilton works in the tradition of artists, who from earliest times, have made it their life’s ambition to create works of enduring beauty, masterpieces that reach out and challenge us at the deepest level of human experience. Such artists are not motivated by extraneous factors like public acceptance. Rather it is their inner voice to which they listen, and which gives them direction. Ken Hamilton’s women seem almost perfect to us, not in a self-satisfied way, but by virtue of the human qualities that animate them. They are not about physical beauty alone, although they possess it in abundance. No, the allure they possess comes from the emotional life we find in them, from a claritas, an inner light that radiates outward, and which, at a certain level, may be thought of as a reflection of the divine spirit in us all. Colm Rowan Philadelphia, April 2012

Creator:
Ken Hamilton (British, Northern Irish)
Creation Year:
2011
Dimensions:
Height: 16.75 in (42.55 cm)Width: 14.75 in (37.47 cm)Depth: 1.75 in (4.45 cm)
Medium:
Canvas,Oil,Board
Movement Style:
Realist
Period:
2010-
Condition:
Gallery Location:
East Hampton, NY
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU145927901212

21st Century and Contemporary Realist Nude Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Dave Seeley
"Fire Starter" – Nude Figure Oil Painting Artistry, 2017

$6,600 Sale Price

20% Off

H 40 in W 30.5 in D 1 in

Fiona #1

Located in Denver, CO

Dave Seeley's "Fiona #1" is an original, handmade oil painting that depicts a female model holding purple velvet fabric tightly around her form to reveal the curves of her figure. ...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Dave Seeley
Fiona #1, 2021

$4,780 Sale Price

20% Off

H 36 in W 24 in D 2 in

Polish Judaica Portrait of Hasidic Rabbi Shtetl Tailor Oil Painting

Located in Surfside, FL

Older, realistic portrait of an older Jewish shtetl tailor by Polish artist. Here the artist conveys a sense of quiet grandeur through the eyes of his subject and the way it's rendered. Part of a distinguished European lineage of Jewish genre...

Category

20th Century Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Polish Judaica Portrait of Hasidic Rabbi Shtetl Tailor Oil Painting

$1,250

H 23.5 in W 29.75 in

Portrait of a Monkey with Wine Jug, Zacharias Noterman (Bel. Fr. 1824-1890)

By Zacharias Noterman

Located in SANTA FE, NM

Portrait of a Monkey with Wine Jug Zacharias Noterman (Belgium & France 1824-1890) Initialed "Z N" l.r. Oil on board 8 x 6 inches PROVENANCE: Galerie Tamenaga, Paris (label verso); Louvre des Antiquaires, Paris; Berman Swarttz, Los Angeles, California, Marcella Swarttz, Beverly Hills, California 8 x 6 inches Zacharias Notermann (1820 in Ghent – 1890 in Paris) was a Belgian painter and printmaker who specialized in scenes with monkeys engaging in human activities (the so-called singeries), as well as in paintings of dogs. He also produced images and scenes of traveling circuses. Zacharias Noterman was born in Ghent in the family as the son of an artist-decorator. He was originally trained by his older brother Emmanuel Noterman, genre and animal painter active in Antwerp. Noterman continued his art education at the Academy of fine arts Antwerp. Zacharie Noterman...

Category

Mid-19th Century Realist Animal Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Zacharias Noterman
Portrait of a Monkey with Wine Jug, Zacharias Noterman (Bel. Fr. 1824-1890)

$9,900

H 8 in W 6 in

Rare 19th Century Russian Oil Portrait Bearded Man with Staff Signed Gilt Frame

Located in Stockholm, SE

RARE museum-quality example of a 19th‑century Russian plein‑air oil study on canvas, executed with swift, confident brushstrokes by the skilled hand of a masterful artist. The tall f...

Category

Late 19th Century Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Wood, Oil, Cardboard

Rare 19th Century Russian Oil Portrait Bearded Man with Staff Signed Gilt Frame, e.g. 1877

$11,564

H 24.6 in W 16.4 in D 1 in

Polish Judaica Portrait of Hasidic Rabbi with Tallit Synagogue Oil Painting

Located in Surfside, FL

Realistic portrait of an old Jewish shtetl type pulpit rabbi by a Polish artist. Here the artist conveys a sense of quiet grandeur through the eyes of his subject and the way it's rendered. Part of a distinguished European lineage of Jewish genre...

Category

20th Century Realist Portrait Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Polish Judaica Portrait of Hasidic Rabbi with Tallit Synagogue Oil Painting

$1,100

H 23.5 in W 29.75 in

Portrait of a Young Boy Seen from Behind

Located in Stockholm, SE

This intimate oil painting presents a young boy viewed from a three-quarter rear angle, caught in a quiet, reflective moment. The child’s back is turned gently toward the viewer, ren...

Category

1890s Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Canvas, Oil, Board

Emma Ekwall
Portrait of a Young Boy Seen from Behind, late 1800s

$3,803

H 16.15 in W 13.78 in

Tick Tock

By Chikako Okada

Located in Burlingame, CA

'Tick Tock' is a masterfully painted oil on canvas. The painting is 8 1/4 x 5 3/4 inches unframed. Tick Tock is wired and ready to hang and enjoy. Conditio...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Board, Linen

Chikako Okada
Tick Tock, 2019

$3,000

H 8.25 in W 5.75 in D 1 in

At work. 1950, oil on cardboard, 49x69 cm

By Alfejs Bromults

Located in Riga, LV

At work. 1950, oil on cardboard, 49x69 cm Socrealist artworks, women are sorting sprats Alfejs Bromults (1913.3.IV - 1991.11.I) His first professional education was at National Uni...

Category

1950s Realist Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Cardboard

Alfejs Bromults
At work. 1950, oil on cardboard, 49x69 cm, 1950

$7,726

H 19.3 in W 27.17 in D 0.2 in

Gypsy woman. 1959., oil on cardboard, 48x37 cm

By Alfejs Bromults

Located in Riga, LV

Gypsy woman. 1959., oil on cardboard, 48x37 cm Alfejs Bromults (1913.3.IV - 1991.11.I) His first professional education was at National University at studies to R.Suta, J. Bine and...

Category