Still Life; Dragonfly and Primrose

Depicted in this still life is a dragonfly bug and a primrose flower next to a snail and a fly. The composition is very simplistic, narrowing the background down to just the original paper. It feels as if it is a study for the wildlife.

Framed: 12 x 11 inches

Karl-Wilhelm de Hamilton was a son of the Scottish still-life painter, James Hamilton, who was active in Brussels after the Glorious Revolution in England. Like his father and his two brothers, Georg and Philipp-Ferdinand, Karl-Wilhelm specialized in still-life paintings, with an emphasis on insects, reptiles and thistles; thus his nickname. Thistle Hamilton. Although born in Brussels, the three Hamilton sons spent their careers as court painters in central Europe. Philipp-Ferdinand was employed in Vienna from 1705 as court painter to Emperor Charles VI and later to Empress Maria-Theresa. Karl-Wilhelm worked as a painter in many of the Germanic courts, before being named the court painter in Augsburg of Prince Bishop Alexander Sigismond von Pfalz-Neuberg. Some evidence points to the artist later working as a court painter in Baden-Baden from 1699 to 1707.
Thistle Hamilton’s style, defined by an unsurpassed precision of line tempered with an acute naturalism, was seemingly inspired by the still-life works of the Dutch and Flemish masters. Including Jacques de Gheyn II, Otho Marseus van Schriek and Jan van Kessel the elder, who works had been avidly collected by the regional German rulers. This sheet, with an exactingly painted dragonfly, snail, fly and primrose on a clear white ground, is either a preparatory study for one of Karl-Wilhelm’s forest floor still-life paintings or independent work of art.