Hildegard Hume Hamilton

(1898 – 1970)

Hildegard Hume Hamilton was born in Syracuse, New York, in 1898. After her education there, and brief training at the age of six in art schools in Venice, Italy, while on a European sojourn with her father, she studied fine art at the Académie Julian, the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Grande Chaumière in Paris, France, during the 1920s and 1930s. After returning to the United States, Mrs. Hamilton studied at the Art Students League, New York, New York, and the Cincinnati Art Academy, Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hamilton exhibited her topographical street-scenes and landscapes widely throughout the United States with shows at the Syracuse, New York, Museum of Fine Art; the University of Kentucky; the University of Georgia, and most importantly, New York City’s Society of Independent Artists from 1929 to 1933, 1938, 1939, 1943 and 1944. Hamilton’s paintings are included in the collections of Wesleyan College, Virginia Military Institute, the University of Georgia, and Hanover College.

Hamilton discovered Florida sometime after 1936, the date of her first Florida painting. And while she traveled extensively after 1933, with recorded residencies in Tangiers, Tokyo, Nassau, Malta, Sicily, Portugal, England, France, Spain, and throughout South America and Mexico, she called Ft. Lauderdale her permanent home after 1948. There, she continued to paint both European views gleaned from her notebooks and photo albums, as well as scenes of Florida including plein air views of the Tarpon River and Himmarshe Canal near Ft. Lauderdale. Hildegarde Hamilton died in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in January of 1970, at the age of 72.

Submitted by Gary R. Libby, author, curator and art historian