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Gavin Hamilton

Born: Murdieston, Scotland, 1723
Died: Rome, 4 January 1798
Nationality: Scottish
Studies: 

Glasgow University (1740s); with portrait painter Agostino Masucci (from 1748, Rome)

Career: 

painter, art and antiquities dealer, archaeologist

Travels

1748: moves to Rome. Friend of Anton Raphael Mengs, Heinrich Fuseli and other artists working in Rome

Commissions from: 

Prince Marcantonio IV Borghese

Important Artworks: 

Brutus Promising to Avenge the Death of Lucretia, 1763 (Drury Lane Theater, London)

The Oath of Brutus, 1767 (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven) 

Agrippina Landing at Brindisium with the Ashes of Germanicus, c. 1765 (Tate, London)

Venus Promising Paris Helen as his Wife, 1782-84 (Palazzo Braschi, Rome)

Portraits of Hamilton

Irish sculptor Christopher Hewetson (1737-1798), also residing in Rome, made a plaster bust of Hamilton in 1784 (University Art Collection, Glasgow).