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I
rish
& I
nternational
A
rt
A
uction
M
onday
25
th
A
pril
2016
at
6.00
pm
37
41
Letitia Marion Hamilton RHA (1 878-1964) Bunbeg, Co. Donegal (c.1949)signed with initials ‘LMH’ lower left
oil on canvas
51 x 61cm (20 x 24in)
Provenance:
Whytes, Dublin 19th September 2006 Lot 16
Private Collection
Exhibited:
Oireachtas Art Exhibition, Dublin, 1949, catalogue no.41
€15,000-20,000 (£11,718-15,625)
Letitia Marion Hamilton was born in County Meath in 1878 and hailed from an artistic family, her great-grand-mother was the art-
ist Marianne-Caroline Hamilton and her cousin was the watercolourist Rose Maynard Barton. Both Hamilton and her sister Eva
studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art under William Orpen. Hamilton studied enamelling there also, winning a silver
medal in 1912 by both the School and the Board of Education National Commission. Her work showed elements of Art Nouveau,
foreshadowing her later modernist leanings. Hamilton also studied in Belgium with Frank Brangwyn and the Slade School of Fine
Art. She was a prolific painter of the Irish countryside, exhibiting more than 200 paintings at the Royal Hibernian Academy of which
she became a member in 1943. Together with Paul Henry, his wife Emily Grace Mitchell/Grace Henry, Mary Swanzy, Jack Butler
Yeats and others, she formed the Society of Dublin Painters in 1920. In 1948 Letitia was awarded a bronze medal in the arts section
of the Olympic Games for her painting of the Meath Hunt Point to Point Races, the only Irish medal that year, and one of the last
Olympic medals for art to be awarded.