Robert Hamilton | Paper Moon - Exhibitions

One of the most idiosyncratic and under-recognized artists of post-War American art, Robert Hamilton (1917-2004) taught painting and drawing at the Rhode Island School of Design for thirty-four years. Yvonne Jacquette, Richard Merkin, George Lloyd, and Dean Richardson were some of his many students. For Hamilton, who flew over 100 missions in WW II as a P-47 bomber pilot, the picture plane was a stage for depicting invented narratives brimming with humor, pathos, and an unquenchable zest for life. His experiences during the war profoundly influenced the imagery in his paintings, which often feature figures from history and from art, bon vivant characters and animals, blithely enjoying life and defying the inevitability of death.

In his characteristic make-do fashion, Hamilton mostly used house paint from the local hardware store, stretching his own canvases or more often working on Masonite panels. He fabricated and painted his own wonkily ornate frames, adding a Baroque, old-world flair to his dreamlike compositions. In the late 1970s, he withdrew from the art world, choosing to exhibit his work primarily at The Octagon, an eight-sided gallery he built on his property in Port Clyde, Maine, where he and his family had spent summers since the 1950s, and where he lived full-time after retiring from RISD in 1981.

Robert Hamilton | Paper Moon

February 6 – 28, 2026

Selected Works

Press Release

Picturing Maine & America — Paintings of Robert Hamilton: The Best-Kept Secret of Maine Art by Christopher Crosman

“If you fall off a cliff, you might as well try to fly.” — As told to Robert Hamilton by a fellow artist

9/29/2020