Donald Hamilton Fraser – Red, 1963

Highly acclaimed British painter Donald Hamilton Fraser (1929 – 2009) is renowned for his abstract and landscape works that have defined his long and successful career as an artist. Born in London, Fraser was educated at Maidenhead grammar school in Berkshire, and soon after trained as a journalist with Kemsley Newspapers. After completing his national service in 1949, he decided to pursue his deep-rooted interest in painting, and attended St Martins School of Art from 1949 – 1952. Having already attracted a degree of notice, in 1953 the gallery Gimpel Fils in London gave him his first opportunity of many one-man shows. That same year he was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris for a year, where he began to fully embrace his skills and confidence as a painter. In 1958, Fraser was taken on as a tutor in the painting school of the Royal College of Art, where he remained in the post for 25 years.

Fraser participated in many of the most significant exhibitions of British work including the Royal Academy’s ‘25 Years of British Painting’. He taught alongside other major British artists such as Sir Peter Blake in the 1960s, and tutored some of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century, including David Hockney, Patrick Caufield, and R.B. Kitaj.

After much study and travel including tutoring at the Royal College of Art, contact with the post war Ecole de Paris, and a long relationship with the Royal Academy, Donald spent his final years with his wife by the river at Henley on Thames.