PORTRAITS IN PASTEL
by
Barbara Kaczmarowska-Hamilton

His Holiness Pope John Paul II Click on the picture to see larger image

"The wife of a Tory peer Lady Belhaven and Stenton, has helped a society painter to secure a sitting by Pope John Paul II. Basia Kaczmarowska- Hamilton, who has painted Ffion Hague and Prince Michael of Kent, has been granted this rare chance to capture the Pope on canvas after her chum Lady Belhaven, who, like the portraitist, is Polish, engineered an introduction. But while at a small private Mass celebrated by the Pope last week, Basia's nerves got the better of her. "I called Stanislaus Dziwisz, the private secretary to Pope, mister rather than His Excellency - it was very embarassing,"- she recalls." The Times, 3 November 1999

For many centuries the art of portraiture has held up a mirror to society. Artists such as Rembrandt and Reynolds, Ingres and Sargent, have left us not just the likenesses of their sitters, but often a record of what they wore, what their houses were like and even the sort of pets they kept. The portraitist has thus played an invaluable role in depicting the fashions and manners of the day. It is therefore very encouraging to find that this tradition is still flourishing and being kept alive by today's generation of portrait painters, among whom Barbara Kaczmarowska-Hamilton has achieved a notable reputation, both in this country and abroad, for the vigour and insight of her work. These are qualities that once again we may enjoy in her latest exhibition. HRH The Duke of Kent, Patron The European Academy for the Arts.

HRH Duke of Kent Click on the picture to see larger image

"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. Click on the following thumbnail images to see larger examples of the artists work: HRH Dom Duarte, The Duke of Braganza HRH Prince Michael of Kent Princess Tatiana Metternich Manfred Swarovski 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. Click on the following thumbnail images to see larger examples of the artists work: Countess of St Andrews (Sylvana), portrait inspired by Winterhalter Alistair Buchanan Maria Scherer, author of The Emperor Waltz The Lord Belhaven and Stenton 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? Click on the following thumbnail images to see larger examples of the artists work: Sophie Perkins, great-granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill Alexander Perkins, great-grandson of Sir Winston Churchill US Ambassador to Portugal, Mrs Elizabeth Frawley Bagley, with Vaughan and Connors Ian Hamilton 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, Director of the European Academy for the Arts

Click on the following thumbnail images
to see larger examples of the artists work:

Ffion Hague	Lady Helen Taylor	Meredith Jenny	Roy Loftin

"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."

Robin Simon
Editor of APOLLO, The International Art magazine.

Click on the following thumbnail images
to see larger examples of the artists work:

Jimmy Marshall	The Adler brothers	Brian Pilkington	Mrs Winston Churchill (Luce)
Tina Santi Flaherty	Caroline Demole with Claire-Anne and Noel	Lukasz Zulawski	Professor Sir Ghillean Prance, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Klara Mycielska Wilbraham (Lala)	Constance du Chastel de la Howarderie, Princesse Maximilien de Merode with Helene and Jacques	HRH Infanta Dona Maria Francisca de Braganca	Alex Cairns, who, together with Dominique Cargnelli, creates all the frames for my portraits
Adrian Sanders D.L.	Spindrift Al Swaidi with Towfik and Kalita	Doctor Stanley Quek	Sos Palmer-Tomkinson with Honor

"Picture this intimate scene…"

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.

DAILY EXPRESS MAY 26, 1994

Click on the following thumbnail images
to see larger examples of the artists work:

HRH Prince Michael of Kent	HRH Princess Alexandra	David Henry and Maximillian Liddell-Grainger	The Marquess of Bath
Gigi Letts Cothier	Lady in Red	Brothers	Lord Cowdrey

Sarah Mahoney, granddaughter of Richard Adams, author of Watership Down