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Balzac called his great literary canvas "La Comedie Humaine". In this exhibition of Basia Hamilton, we also look at a canvas full of characters and people as they weave the fabric of Europe's society at the turn of this century - but the image which goes straight to my heart is the image of the 7-year old fair haired Princess Beatrice (1994), her blue eyes looking straight out of the canvas, daring the future. She brings us straight to the year 2000, while her beautiful dalmarian's eyes, moist and begging, look back into the past - two different moods which I experience in this beautiful show." Rosa Maria Letts,
"Picture this intimate scene…"
DAILY EXPRESS MAY 26, 1994 Biography Introduction Barbara Kaczmarowska Hamilton was born in Sopot, Poland. She graduated from the Academy of Art in Gdansk in 1972, then continued her studies at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice and Rome. In 1997 she was awarded the Order of merit by the President of Poland. A specialist in pastel portraits, she divides her working time between her country home in Berkshire, her studio in London and travelling abroad. Education Academy of Art, Gdansk, Poland Awards 1973 - International Exhibition of Paintings and Sculptures of
Young Artists, Rome Selected Commissions The Queen Mother Group Exhibitions 1972 - Venezia, Bevilaqua La Masa Solo Exhibitions 1972 - Gallery 8, Soport, Poland |
"This
is right for the European Academy to hold an exhibition of contemporary
portraiture this year in London - Sargent's retrospective at the
Tate Gallery recreated for us Parisian and London society at the
turn of the 20th century - Ingres at the National Gallery presented
the French middle class after the Empire - those magnificent administrators,
politicians and wealthy best ladies, famous for their skins and
fabrics. They were shaping the new France - the France which has
become so well-known in our century for its art and style - the
palettes of Renoir and Matisse and the costumes of Yyes Saint Laurent
and Chanel.
It
is amazing how art can anticipate but also silently guide taste
and eventually production-Barbara Kaczmarowska-Hamilton (Basia for
her public and sitters) has dared to take on our end-of-the-century
society. She was born in Poland, where she studied at the Gdansk
Academy of Art. She left for Italy twenty-five years ago where she
studied and travelled in Venice, Rome, Cagliari, Porto Cervo, then
back to Rome and London - localities where she contituously exhibited,
moving from abstract art to abstract surrealism, to naturalism and
likeness. She then found her talent in rendering likenesses, at
capturing people's fleeting existence, revealed and rescued by light
from the shadow of their existence. I am thinking particularly of
the portrait of a Sardinian peasant, 1974, or that splendid portrait
of Guttuso, 1976, when the sitter appears deep in thought, almost
trying to capture his latest subject.
She
then went on to paint the grandees, the famous and rich - "the
beautiful people" as her sitters were described in an article
in the Daily Express during her last exhibition at the then Accademia
Italiana in 1994.And yet not quite - I like to describe her sitters
rather as the knights errant of Europe, the players of present society,
still on the throne or already deposed, succesful now or in the
past, or ready to start a great future. They all stare straight
at us, smilling politely, in the soft shades or the artist's pastel
hues - extremely harmonious, elegantly reechoed along the composition
to rearrange any dissonance if there was one to be found. Pastels
lend these characters a softness, a dream-like quality which at
times appears also in their eyes. Is this a quality which perhaps
comes straight from the artist? Her own reflection on the transience
of life - the bubble of life?
"The
chief business of the portrait painter is to take a likeness. These
days, the ego of the individual artist is often over-prized and,
even in the case of the portraiture, basic aims are ignored. There
are no such problems with the art of Barbara Kaczmarowska-Hamilton.
She has the ability to take an exceptional likeness. The sitter
is immediately recognisible, and yet the artist's style is quite
unmistakable. It is a rare and satisfying combination. We must be
grateful that, after a successful career as an abstract and semi-surrealist
artist, following a full academic training in Poland, she turned
her gifts to portraiture. With luck, her example will inspire others."
In
the same way that John Singer Sargent captured Edwardian society,
so Barbara Kaczmarowska-Hamilton has all but cornered today's market
in social portraiture. She prefers intimate pastels to Sargent's
grand swagger oils. And intimate it certainly was when we gathered
in Knightsbridge for an exhibition of her work including her picture
of the Duchess of York and daughters…200 people were invited and
400, including Fergie and the ponytailed Marquess of Bath, turned
up. But not, alas, any waitresses. Which is why Mara and husband
Lorenzo, owners of San Lorenzo of which Princess Diana is so fond,
served the food and champagne they provided.