Description
Book SynopsisFor Mary Riter Hamilton, capturing the emotional landscape of battlefields and graveyards in the months after the Great War's armistice became an artistic calling and defined her work. This book recovers a body of work that stands as a unique and enduring portrait of the effects of the Great War.
Trade Review"Mary Riter Hamilton's remarkable story is one of struggle, talent, commitment, and courage. Gammel has undertaken years of painstaking research in archives and in the field but also goes far beyond the sources at hand to carry us into the aftermath of Great War catastrophe and one woman's determination to record it. I Can Only Paint brings Hamilton's human and artistic story powerfully to life, filtered through the experience and intelligence of someone who cares enough to place her before us. Brava!" Sherrill E. Grace, University of British Columbia
"As [I Can Only Paint] reveals, Hamilton had many strikes against her in the opinion of the art establishment a century ago, but her failings did not, apparently, include production of inferior or subversive art. "Walker, Brown and Shepherd," Gammel writes of the powerful gallery triumvirate, "agreed that such a troublesome woman, no matter how good her art, had no place in the nation's gallery." Galleries West Magazine
"Some of Hamilton's most arresting work springs from her observations of life returning even to the front lines. Trenches on the Somme is filled with startlingly red poppies against a grim purple sky, for instance. Two older men in white put their shovels to work in Filling the Shell Holes in No Man's Land, with a few charred trees in the background. With I Can Only Paint, [Gammel] has given us a revelation about a remarkable painter." Literary Review of Canada
