July 14 & 15, 2020 Fine & Decorative Arts
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/14/2020
James Hamilton was born near Belfast, Ireland and immigrated with his family to the United States in 1834 at the age of fifteen. They settled in Philadelphia, where he secured formal instruction and began his artistic career in the 1840s, exhibiting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and later at the National Academy of Design in New York. Hamilton traveled to Great Britain in 1854 to study the paintings of James M. W. Turner and other English landscape masters. In succeeding decades, Hamilton worked actively as a landscape artist and became best known for dramatic marine scenes of all kinds, including this dramatic sunset scene likely near the Philadelphia harbor. In 1875, Hamilton auctioned a large group of paintings and moved with his family to San Francisco to paint scenes of the Pacific Coast, with plans to continue a worldwide trip westward. He died in San Francisco unexpectedly three years later in 1878. Inpainting on the bottom edge lower left and several areas of the sky.
Item Dimensions: Frame: 23 - 1/2" x 36 - 1/2".
Artist
JAMES HAMILTON (IRISH/AMERICAN, 1819 - 1878).
Signature
Signed "James Hamilton Philadelphia 1862 "on original canvas window on reverse, relined.