Sunset

Additional Information

Hamilton Hamilton was of Scottish ancestry, though he was born in England. When he was very young, his parents emigrated to the United States and settled near Norwalk, Connecticut. Young Hamilton’s interest in art was not shared by his parents, though they did come round and help send him to Europe to study in 1870. After two years abroad, he returned home and opened a studio. The following year, 1873, Hamilton traveled to Colorado to sketch and paint and the works he produced there, and thereafter, brought him his greatest fame when some were selected for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. Hamilton toured Europe again, came home, went West again, and eventually opened a studio in New York where he befriended Thomas Moran, William Merritt Chase, and other American luminaries. The radical color in Hamilton’s Western Sunset echoes Albert Bierstadt’s panoramas of the American West, but Hamilton’s treatment of the light incorporates luminist, Barbizon, and even some impressionist techniques: shadings of yellow evening light permeate the scene, so that yellow influences all the other colors in a wash that limits the artist’s palette and allows for subtle gradations that fire highlights in some areas while muting others. The width of the strokes, particularly in the clouds and rocks, is suggestive of the plein air approach that marks Barbizon painters like Corot and what was then the new impressionist school. Where are we? Evening on the sixth day of the biblical genesis. The small deer at bottom right tell us that the animal kingdom is in place. But that still doesn’t answer the question. We— humankind—are the viewers, witnesses to the scene in all its majesty and beauty.

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Please note that the first unframed photo is most accurate for color. Framed photographs are to show the frame and are not color corrected to the painting.

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