Sisters in art

As Dunboyne’s ‘big tree’, the famous lime in the middle of the village was being felled recently, it was recalled that it featured in a famous painting by local artist Eva Hamilton.

The 1911 work depicts three local children sitting under the shade of the tree, with village life going on behind them. A young boy is playing a pipe with two girls listening. On social media, one Dublin man said he believed one of the girls was his grandmother.

The iconic painting featured on the front cover of Dunboyne Historical Society’s local history publication, and on a Christmas card printed by former local TD and Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, when he was Taoiseach.

Eva Hamilton was one member of a very creative family from Hamwood, a manor house on the Maynooth Road, and features in a new book ‘Eva, Letitia and The Hamilton Sisters – Class, Gender and Art’ by Stephen Odlum, which looks at the journey of how six sisters survived a conservative and patriarchal society in which roles for women were clearly defined, as a newly independent Ireland transitioned from British rule.

Letitia was to become the best known of the siblings, winning a gold medal for art at the 1948 Olympics in London for her painting ‘Meath Hunt Point to Point Races, an oil on canvass. (The only other Irish medal winner for art was Jack Yeats for his 'Liffey Swim' in 1924, which won silver).

Stephen Odlum, the writer of the hardback, large format publication, explains that the genesis of the book was a visit, as part of a fine arts course, to Hamwood, the ancestral home of the Hamiltons.

"I was fascinated by the history of the house and the fact that, seven generations later, it was still in the ownership of the original family," Odlum says. "Unlike most heritage houses in Ireland, it still retained much of its original contents, including paintings by Eva and Letitia Hamilton."

Odlum completed a M Phil in the history of Irish art in Trinity College, Dublin, graduating in 2018, and as part of the course, chose to do a dissertation on Letitia Hamilton.

She is the most noteworthy member of the family, winning four medals for her art in both national and international competitions. Letitia was the first ever female competitor to win an Olympic medal for Ireland and one of only three Irish female competitors to do so. She was a founding member of the Society of Dublin Painters in 1920, established to promote a more Modernist style in Irish art and champion the avant-garde in a distinctly conservative environment.

Odlum’s work follows the lives of six sisters born into an Anglo-Irish family at a time of significant cultural and political change in Ireland.

Part of an elite that was fading, both in financial and social terms, they set out on career paths that challenged the structure of society of the day. Odlum tells us they exhibited a level of independence that allowed them to transcend the boundaries that were imposed on women at the time.

As a family of 10 born in rapid succession to Charles and Louisa Hamilton, the six girls and four boys (two died in infancy), formed a unique bond that saw a number of the sisters live together for a period of over 80 years.

Born in 1876, Eva was the oldest surviving child, soon followed by Charles Gerald in 1977, Letitia (known as May to family) in 1878; Amy in 1879; Frederick in 1880; Ethel in 1882; Connie in 1883; and Lilian in 1884. Of the six sisters, Lily was the only one to marry.

Artistic and gardening genes featured strongly in the Hamilton family, and it was into these arenas into which three of the sisters progressed - Eva and Letitia becoming artists, and Connie establishing her own garden consultancy business.

As Protestants and part of the dominant, though declining Anglo-Irish class, the sisters had access to more liberal, secular education, with a greater emphasis placed on the arts. The sisters also had financial independence of sorts, that enabled them to assist additional training in their chosen fields.

Pursuing these careers required persistence as Ireland throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century was a typical patriarchal society where the expected roles for women were marriage and child-rearing.

Both Eva and Letitia lived into their eighties, and had long careers as artists, with Letitia’s spanning over 60 years, and Eva’s close to 50. Eva exhibited every year in the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), from 1904 to 1946, except for 1931 and around the World War II years.

Her first and last RHA paintings were portraits of her sisters – Amy and Lilian in 1904, and Letitia in 1946. She was equally productive in watercolours, exhibiting with the Watercolour Society of Ireland almost continuously from 1898 to 1941. Portraits accounted for 50 per cent of her exhibited output.

Letitia was a prolific artist, producing a significant quantity or work. She exhibited at the watercolour society annual show almost every year from 1902 to her death in 1964, likewise in the RHA from 1909 to 1964 with a break of just two years. She took part in exhibitions such as the Exposition d’Art Irlandais in Paris, and the Royal Academy in London as early as 1922, followed by the Exhibition of Irish Art in Brussels in 1930.

At a time when a generation of primarily male Irish artists working in the academic tradition, such as Sean Keating, Dermod O’Brien, and James Humbert Craig, were trying to establish a new Irish identity, by contrast, Letitia travelled in Europe looking for inspiration from European artists and painting the sights and scenes in a loose Modernist style. Her output is believed to be in the region of 1,600 works.

With their brother, Charles, and his wife, Violet, continuing to live in Hamwood, the latter part of the sisters’ lives saw a long sequence of moves to various rented properties around Palmerstown and Castleknock, and their final move was in 1945 to Woodville House in Lucan, where they lived and painted until their deaths, and where Connie delighted in the gardens. Amy had come back to Ireland in 1946 to live with her sister after she had retired, due to ill health, from her position as county secretary of the Yorkshire County Federation of Women’s Institutes.

Eva, Amy, Letitia, Connie and Freddie all died within four years of each other from 1960, and were laid to rest together in the Church of Ireland cemetery in Dunboyne, with Charles and Violet nearby.

Stephen Odlum’s primary source of information was a number of scrapbooks compiled by the sisters, while Charles Hamilton, the current owner of Hamwood, allowed access to the house and its painting collection. He studies the family’s beginnings and early years, schooling and artistic training, their place in Irish society of the day, early travel and exhibitions, and their recognition, the lure of the west, and the sisters’ later years and legacy.

"Together, the sisters helped to make the work of women artists be taken seriously and respected, and paved the way for a new generation of Irish women artists such as Dorothy Cross and Kathy Prendergast, who now enjoy an international reputation," he says.

"This was a unique family, whose achievements need to be recognised and appreciated, part of a world that has now disappeared. They lived through a time of great upheaval in Ireland, adapting to the changes as they saw fit, but still retaining their own character and style," Stephen Odlum believes.

"This was a unique family, the likes of which will never be seen again in Ireland."