Lot Essay
The artist was the son of the Scottish still-life painter, James Hamilton (c. 1640-1720), who was active in Brussels. James had two other sons who became painters, Karl Wilhelm, called 'Thistle-Hamilton' (c. 1668-1754), and Philipp Ferdinand (1672-1737). Although born in Brussels, the three Hamilton sons spent their careers as court painters in central Europe, where they specialized in animal and still-life pictures. Johann Georg was a court painter of the Emperor Charles VI, for whom he painted pictures of copperplates for the Rösselzimmer in Schloss Schönbrunn, Vienna.
The horses in the present pictures are from the famous stud of the Princes of Liechtenstein at Eisgrub, in Bohemia (now Lednice, Czech Republic). The stud, regarded as the finest in Europe, was built up systematically and with great technical knowledge by Prince Karl-Eusebius (1611-1684), whose himself wrote treatises on a wide range of subjects, including on harness and stud-farm rules, equine medication and the rules of hunting.
The present portraits are two of a number commissioned from Hamilton by the Prince of Liechtenstein for the Garden Palace in vienna. They were subsequently moved to a specially built gallery at Schloss Feldsberg, the early Baroque palace on the Austrian-Moravian border. Hamilton had earlier, in 1700, been commissioned to paint six portraits of horses from the Eisgrub stables, the backgrounds for which were subsequently added by Anton Faistenberger in 1707.
The horses in the present pictures are from the famous stud of the Princes of Liechtenstein at Eisgrub, in Bohemia (now Lednice, Czech Republic). The stud, regarded as the finest in Europe, was built up systematically and with great technical knowledge by Prince Karl-Eusebius (1611-1684), whose himself wrote treatises on a wide range of subjects, including on harness and stud-farm rules, equine medication and the rules of hunting.
The present portraits are two of a number commissioned from Hamilton by the Prince of Liechtenstein for the Garden Palace in vienna. They were subsequently moved to a specially built gallery at Schloss Feldsberg, the early Baroque palace on the Austrian-Moravian border. Hamilton had earlier, in 1700, been commissioned to paint six portraits of horses from the Eisgrub stables, the backgrounds for which were subsequently added by Anton Faistenberger in 1707.