Captain William Hamilton

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Captain William Hamilton

Artist Sir Joshua Reynolds (English | British, 1723-1792)

Date1762-1772 and 1785

Dimensions30 1/4 x 25 1/8 in. (76.8 x 63.8 cm)

Mediumoil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LineGift of Edward Drummond Libbey

Object number

1926.58

Not on View

Label TextCaptain William Hamilton (1730–1803), later Sir William, was a soldier, a Member of Parliament, and in 1764 was appointed English ambassador to the court of Naples, where he remained until 1800. His presence helped to establish the city as a main destination on the Grand Tour—the tour of cultural and historic sites across Continental Europe undertaken as an essential part of the education of every young English gentleman. Hamilton escorted many important guests to the new Pompeii excavations or to Mount Vesuvius, including Russian czar Paul I, Mozart, and Goethe. Hamilton was among the great early English collectors of classical antiquities. He was also an early expert on volcanoes. Here Sir Joshua Reynolds, the most prominent British painter of his day, alludes to Hamilton’s intellectual interests by depicting him as if he is pausing to reflect on a passage he has just read from the book open before him. Despite publishing monumental volumes on his antiquities collection and his volcanic studies, Hamilton’s achievements sometimes have been overshadowed by his second wife Emma Lyon’s affair with British naval hero Lord Horatio Nelson.Published ReferencesCotton, Reynolds, London, 1856, p. 35.

Leslie, C.R., and T. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1865, I, pp. 156, 162, 219.

Graves, A., and W.V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A., London, 1899-1901, II, pp. 424-425; IV, pp. 1329-1330.

Armstrong, W., Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1900, p. 210.

Baldry, A.L., Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1905, p. xxviii.

Godwin, Blake-More, Catalogue of European Paintings, Toledo, 1939, p. 282, repr. p. 283.

Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, no. 89, March 1940, repr.

Waterhouse, E.K., Reynolds, London, 1941, p. 51, pl. 144B.

Warner, O., Emma Hamilton and Sir William, London, 1960, p. 15, repr. opp. p. 16.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, European Paintings, Toledo, 1976, pp. 137-138, pl. 310.

Morse, John D., Old Master Paintings in North America, New York, 1979, p. 238.

Jenkins, Ian, and Kim Sloan, Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, London, 1996, p. 77, fig. 38.

Mannings, David, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, New Haven, 2000, no. 822, vol. I, pp. 238-239; vol. II, fig. 331, p. 224.

Sørensen, Bent, "Sir William Hamilton's Vesuvian Apparatus," Apollo, vol. 159, [Jan-June], 2004, pp. 50-57.

D'Hancarville, Pierre-Francois Hugues, The Collection of Antiquities from the Cabinet of Sir William Hamilton, Koln, Taschen, 2004.

Exhibition HistoryLondon, Royal Academy, Exhibition of Works by Old Masters and by Deceased Masters of the British School, 1888, no. 23.

Toledo, The Toledo Museum of Art, English Art of the Eighteenth Century, The Age of Enlightment, 1948, p. 15.

Houston, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, George Washington's World, 1954, no. 111.