The new record set at the Sotheby's Irish sale last week for a painting by Letitia Marion Hamilton bodes well for the works by this artist and her older sister due to be sold in Dublin on Monday. Letitia Hamilton's Goff's Horse Sale exceeded its top estimate of £20,000 sterling to sell for £24,150 at Sotheby's, and two pictures from her hand and one by Eva Hamilton are included in Hamilton Osborne King's fine art auction at the RDS. The Hamiltons were members of a family which has lived for more than two centuries at Hamwood House, just outside Dunboyne, Co Meath. Hamwood is a delightful Palladian house dating from 1764, with tiny wings linked to the main block by curving sweeps. Domestic life at Hamwood earlier this century as described by Mary Hamilton features in Peter Somerville-Large's wonderful The Irish Country House - A Social History. Born in 1876 and 1879 respectively, Eva and Letitia Hamilton were typical of a generation of well-born and well-educated Irish women who turned to art as an outlet for their creative talents at a time when few other pursuits were available (The same was also true of their cousin, Rose Barton). They both studied at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art and in London at the Slade School of Fine Art; in 1904 when Hugh Lane organised an exhibition of Irish painters at London's Guildhall, Eva - whose early career included a lot of portraiture work - was represented by A Lady in Pink.
Both sisters often showed at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Letitia being included as late as 1964, the year of her death. The two sisters even share certain similarities in style, such as enthusiastic use of the palette knife and particularly bright colours, especially pink and white. Theo Snoddy in his Dictionary of Irish Artists quotes a 1943 review of Letitia Hamilton's work, which remarks that "a predilection for the most sugary tones and a super-abundance of white inevitably suggest the confectioner's".
Both were often drawn to the west of Ireland for inspiration and this is the case in the paintings being offered next week. The Eva Hamilton canvas, lot 190, is called A Summer's Day in the West (£5,000-£8,000), while one of the two Letitia Hamilton pictures, lot 165, shows A Fair Day, Clifden (£12,000-£16,000); the other, lot 167, is a view of Bantry Bay (£4,000-£6,000).
Another lot, number 144, has connections with the Hamiltons of Hamwood House. It is a Coalport part tea service dating from circa 1800 and originally belonging to Sarah Ponsonby, one of the two famous Ladies of Llangollen. Having been raised in Woodstock, Co Kilkenny, in 1779 she and her friend, Lady Eleanor Butler, ran away to Wales where they lived together in a cottage for the next 50 years.
Notorious during their lifetimes, they were described by Prince Puckler-Muskace as "the two most celebrated virgins of Europe".
The tea service (estimate £1,400-£1,800) was left to Sarah Ponsonby's niece and sole heir, Caroline Tighe, who married Charles Hamilton of Hamwood. Also containing much fine furniture and silver, the Hamilton Osborne King sale starts at noon.
