Donald Hamilton-Fraser, RA
Born on July 30 1929, Donald Hamilton Fraser was educated at Maidenhead Grammar School, and his first job was as a trainee journalist for Kemsley Newspapers. Painting, to begin with, was still something he did entirely for himself, and it was not until he had completed his National Service in 1949 that he decided to pursue it more seriously, enrolling that year at St Martin's School of Art together with contemporaries including Frank Auerbach, Sandra Blow, Shelia Fell, Leon Kossoff, Jack Smith and Joe Tilson. By the time he left St Martin's in 1952 the critics had begun to take notice, and his work was starting to sell.
Anthony Blunt and John Piper were among assessors that awarded him a one year French government scholarship in Paris in 1953. This brought him in contact with the art of Matisse, Braque and Nicholas de Staël, which had a profound influence on the direction his painting would now take. Equally important was the confidence he derived from French emphasis on the importance of art in society – an attitude not shared in postwar London, where art was often seen as a mere indulgence. Fraser began to develop the highly personal style that was to mark his mature career. "An artist doesn't really choose what sort of pictures he paints," he later observed. "He paints what is there inside him. It is a sort of imperative." Synthesising techniques drawn from De Staël's abstract Tachiste style with his own instincts for the figurative aspects of landscape and still-life, Fraser arrived at an essentially expressionist technique of clear, brilliant colour and thick, stiff impasto paint. To achieve this he evolved a distinctly eccentric technique of mixing each colour on a page of an old telephone directory, tearing them out as he finished and before going on to the next colour, the paper also absorbing much of the surplus oil paint. He liked to describe his work as "semi-abstract pictures based on landscape."
In 1954 he married, at the British embassy in Paris, Judith Wentworth-Sheilds, whom he had met at St Martin's. They returned the same year to London where, to supplement his income from painting, he took a job writing for Arts Review. Within 18 months, however, he was able to devote himself full time to his art.
Then, in 1958, he was invited by Professor Carel Weight to teach one day a week at the Royal College of Art, a position he was to hold, and enjoy hugely, for the next 25 years. Fraser had a fine intellect and a considerable knowledge of European art, music, literature and, above all, ballet. When not working, he spent much of his time following the great ballets and their dancers around Europe. Inevitably, it became a subject for his art.
Fraser had some 70 one-man exhibitions in his lifetime both in Britain and abroad. He was elected a fellow at the Royal College of Art in 1970, becoming an Honorary Fellow in 1984. At the Royal Academy of Arts, he was also made an associate RA in 1975 and a full Royal Academician (RA) in 1985. Also at the Royal Academy, he was an Honorary Curator between 1992 and 1999, a Trustee between 1994 and 2000. From 1986 through 2000 he was a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission. He was on the council of the Artists' General Benevolent Fund starting in 1981 and he was Vice-President of the Royal Overseas League beginning in 1986.
For the last four decades of his life he lived in the same pair of converted cottages at Henley-on-Thames into which he and his wife had moved in 1969. Fraser passed away on 2 September 2009.
Anthony Blunt and John Piper were among assessors that awarded him a one year French government scholarship in Paris in 1953. This brought him in contact with the art of Matisse, Braque and Nicholas de Staël, which had a profound influence on the direction his painting would now take. Equally important was the confidence he derived from French emphasis on the importance of art in society – an attitude not shared in postwar London, where art was often seen as a mere indulgence. Fraser began to develop the highly personal style that was to mark his mature career. "An artist doesn't really choose what sort of pictures he paints," he later observed. "He paints what is there inside him. It is a sort of imperative." Synthesising techniques drawn from De Staël's abstract Tachiste style with his own instincts for the figurative aspects of landscape and still-life, Fraser arrived at an essentially expressionist technique of clear, brilliant colour and thick, stiff impasto paint. To achieve this he evolved a distinctly eccentric technique of mixing each colour on a page of an old telephone directory, tearing them out as he finished and before going on to the next colour, the paper also absorbing much of the surplus oil paint. He liked to describe his work as "semi-abstract pictures based on landscape."
In 1954 he married, at the British embassy in Paris, Judith Wentworth-Sheilds, whom he had met at St Martin's. They returned the same year to London where, to supplement his income from painting, he took a job writing for Arts Review. Within 18 months, however, he was able to devote himself full time to his art.
Then, in 1958, he was invited by Professor Carel Weight to teach one day a week at the Royal College of Art, a position he was to hold, and enjoy hugely, for the next 25 years. Fraser had a fine intellect and a considerable knowledge of European art, music, literature and, above all, ballet. When not working, he spent much of his time following the great ballets and their dancers around Europe. Inevitably, it became a subject for his art.
Fraser had some 70 one-man exhibitions in his lifetime both in Britain and abroad. He was elected a fellow at the Royal College of Art in 1970, becoming an Honorary Fellow in 1984. At the Royal Academy of Arts, he was also made an associate RA in 1975 and a full Royal Academician (RA) in 1985. Also at the Royal Academy, he was an Honorary Curator between 1992 and 1999, a Trustee between 1994 and 2000. From 1986 through 2000 he was a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission. He was on the council of the Artists' General Benevolent Fund starting in 1981 and he was Vice-President of the Royal Overseas League beginning in 1986.
For the last four decades of his life he lived in the same pair of converted cottages at Henley-on-Thames into which he and his wife had moved in 1969. Fraser passed away on 2 September 2009.