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VISUAL ARTS:THE EXHIBITION Hugh Douglas Hamilton: A Life in Picturesat the National Gallery celebrates Hamilton's achievement as one of Ireland's finest portraitists. Hamilton, the son of a wig-maker, was born in Crow Street, Temple Bar, Dublin, in 1740 and attended the Dublin Society's Drawing School in George's Lane, which had been established by Robert West, writes Aidan Dunne.

Based on the rigorous French system, the school was highly regarded. An award-winning student, Hamilton was recognised as a fine draughtsman and by the late 1750s he was working as a portraitist, making small pastel portraits in an oval format. Once he had gained in confidence, his work had a real lightness to it but also a feeling of substance, and his tremendous facility for capturing a sympathetic likeness ensured that he was never short of work. For much of his life he was, if anything, overworked.