Hugh Douglas Hamilton, Irish, 1740-1808
Title: Cupid and Psyche
Date: c.1792
Medium: Pen and brown ink with white bodyclour and graphite on paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 32 x 25.5 cm
Signed: lower right: H. D. Hamilton, Roma
Credit Line: Purchased, 2005
Object Number: NGI.19617
DescriptionThis is a study for an oil painting (NGI 1342) exhibited in Dublin in 1800. Hamilton was probably inspired to undertake this mythological theme by Antonio Canova (1757-1822), who created marble sculptures of Cupid and Psyche in Rome in the 1790s. The graphite overdrawing shows that Hamilton experimented with the placement of the limbs of both figures. A very similar, unsigned drawing of the same subject exists in the collection of Smith College Art Museum, Northampton, Massachusetts. Currently attributed to Bartolomeo Pinelli (1781-1835), it is most likely a slightly earlier study by Hamilton.
ProvenancePurchased, Private Collection, 2005
Exhibition HistoryHugh Douglas Hamilton: A Life in Pictures, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 2008-2009
Taking Stock: Acquisitions 2000-2010, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 13 March 2010 - 25 July 2010
Taking Stock: Acquisitions 2000-2010, National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, 13 March 2010 - 25 July 2010