Great Blue Oak (2020)

Oil on linen.

Francis Hamel has built an international reputation for his landscape paintings as well as his finely structured, formal compositions of trees and flowers. Born in 1963 and trained at The Ruskin School of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, Francis Hamel has lived and worked on the Rousham Estate in Oxfordshire for more than twenty years. Designed by William Kent, the house and gardens of Rousham have been a constant source of inspiration in his work, evident not only in the paintings of his surroundings, but from what he learned from Kent about the connections that exist between gardens and the landscape in which they sit. This exploration of these links has latterly taken Hamel to Italy to paint the formal Italian gardens of Tuscany and Umbria, as well as the wilder landscapes of Le Marche where the artist now has a home. Francis Hamel has undertaken several important private commissions, including a recent series of installed work for Fortnum & Mason of Piccadilly, and his work is held in private collections in the U.S.A., Russia, Japan, Africa and throughout Europe. Corporate and private collections include Goldman Sachs, Rolls Royce, Sir Trevor Nunn, Lady Margaret Hall, Farrer and Co, Sir Cameron Mackintosh, The Prince of Wales Theatre, London and many others.