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Sir William Hamilton Portrait of Hamilton by
P. Batoni
 Sir
William Hamilton (1730-1803) was born in Scotland as the
fourth son of Archibald Hamilton, the third Duke of
Hamilton as well as the British governor of Jamaica.
Because of his parents’ relations with the royal family,
William grew up in close friendship with the future
king, George III. William served in the military before
getting married in 1758. (His wife, Catherine Barlow,
died in 1782.) In 1764 Hamilton was appointed to the Bourbon court of Naples as
Britain's Envoy Extraordinary (and eventually Minister
Plenipotentiary, but never "ambassador" although that's
what everyone called him) and served in that capacity
until 1800.Hamilton was typical of the “gentleman scholar” of his day—diplomat (or whatever) by profession, but propelled by an avid interest in history, art, and the natural sciences and by keen powers of observation. He was eventually made member of the Royal Society of London; his output of publications in various fields was considerable and valuable. He was knighted in 1772. Hamilton was an ardent antiquarian, archaeologist and volcanologist. He collected Greek vases and other artifacts that eventually formed the nucleus of the Roman and Greek section of the British Museum* (see note 1, below); as an archaeologist he actively participated in the early excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum (note 2); and he studied local volcanic and seismic activity. He was definitely not an arm-chair geologist —witness this passage from his Observations on Mount Vesuvius, Mount Etna, and Other Volcanos (pub. T. Cadell, London, 1774): “…I passed the whole day and the night of the twelfth upon the mountain, and followed the course of the lava to its very source: it burst out of the side of the mountain, within about half a mile of the mouth of the Volcano, like a torrent, attended with violent explosions, which threw up inflamed matter to a considerable height…” As well, Hamilton published Campi Phlegraei. Observations on the Volcanoes of the Two Sicilies, as they have been communicated to the Royal Society of London (Naples 1776-79). He also published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. 73, (1783) the first English-language account of the devastating Calabrian earthquake of that year; his report was his translation of a letter he had received from Count Francesco Ippolito detailing the effects of the disaster.  Diplomatically,
Hamilton was instrumental in bringing about the alliance
between Britain and the Kingdom of Naples through a
treaty signed on July 12, 1793. According to the terms
of the treaty, Naples provided 6,000 men for service in
Britain’s war against France. The troops served in
Toulon where the British had occupied the city against
the French Republican Army. (The British and Neapolitans
were finally expelled by a Republican force led by a
young and soon-to-be-promoted artillery captain,
Napoleon Bonaparte.) The British, in return, were
permitted to use the port of Naples as a base and later
were instrumental in shepherding the Bourbon royal
family to safety in Sicily and sheltering them there
during both the period of the Neapolitan
Republic (1799) and, shortly thereafter, the
decade-long French rule of Naples under Murat.In his long tenure as ambassador, Hamilton was a friend to many of the great names on the Grand Tour, including Mozart and Goethe, the latter of whom stayed in Hamilton’s residence, the villa Sessa (photo, above left, at what is now the Piazza dei Martiri). (German sources claim that Hamilton deserves—by sharing his knowledge of Italy with Goethe and others—some credit in the development of what is called the Weimarer Klassik in German literature.) Hamilton’s name is associated with that of his young lover and then wife, Emma Lyon (Lady Hamilton) and admiral Horatio Nelson, with whom Lady Hamilton conducted an infamous love affair—apparently with the encouragement of her husband, William, and much to the delight of generations of novelists and scandal lovers. Sir William finally applied to be recalled in 1796, but did not receive news that his request had been accepted until late 1799. That was after the Bourbon royalist forces had retaken the kingdom from the revolutionary Republic and Hamilton had had a chance to reenter and again see Naples, the city where he had played such an active role. He returned to London and died shortly thereafter. ---- This
red-figured water jar is considered the finest
in the first Hamilton collection of Greek vases.  * 1. Hamilton became quite
the antiquities dealer early in his tenure as
ambassador. Within a few years he had bought entire
private collections of vases, marbles, sculpture, etc.
Hamilton exported and sold many of these items abroad
in spite of the fact that it was illegal to do so. He
sold his first collection to the British museum in
1772. The collection then formed the nucleus of the museum's department of
antiquities. Illustrations with commentary of the
first collection were published between 1766-76 in
Naples in 4 volumes as A Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman
Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Hon. W. Hamilton.
The first collection
influenced artists of the day such as Angelika
Kauffmann and Josiah Wedgwood, founder of the famous
British pottery firm. Some of the second collection
(1798), however, was lost at sea when the ship
transporting the collection, HMS Colossus, went
down off the Isles of Scilly in December 1798; recent
salvage has managed to recover some of the items. The
first collection was vast and included (as cited in
Ramage, below) hundred of vases, terracottas, bronzes,
bas-reliefs, gems, coins and miscellaneous
sacrificial, agricultural and domestic items.
Details on the second collection may be found in
McPhee and Morris (below). (Back up to main text.)* 2. In the days before careful archaeology, Hamilton may be regarded as somewhat of a pioneer. He was not at all in favor of the helter-skelter approach of the day: uncover the ruins, walk off with what you can, and cover up the holes again, all without taking notes. He favoured drawing the ruins in situ and keeping objects together that had been found together for purposes of putting them on display. (Back up to main text.) References: Excluding all the fictional and non-fictional ink spilled on Hamilton’s membership in the juicy William/Emma/Nelson love triangle, there is considerable literature about William Hamilton’s life, in general. Recent bibliography includes: —Fothergill, Brian. Sir William Hamilton: Envoy Extraordinary, (Nonsuch Publishing, 2005); —Constantine, David. Fields of Fire: A Life of Sir William Hamilton, (Phoenix Press, 2002); —Davis, John A. (ed.) and Giovanni Capuano (ed. ). The Hamilton Letters: The Naples Dispatches of Sir William Hamilton, (I.B. Tauris, 2008). Hamilton’s activities as a collector and dealer of antiquities are well-documented in —Ramage, Nancy H. “Sir William Hamilton as Collector, Exporter, and Dealer: The Acquisition and Dispersal of His Collections” in The American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 94, No. 3 (July, 1990), —McPhee,
Ian. Review of “Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum,
Great Britain 20: The British Museum 10: Fragments
from Sir William Hamilton's Second Collection of
Vases Recovered from the Wreck of HMS Colossus by
V. Smallwood and S. Woodford” in The Journal
of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 124, (2004), pp.
212-213; —Morris, Roland. H.M.S. Colossus: The Story of the Salvage of the Hamilton Treasures, Periscope Publishing, Penzance, (2006). |
