Thomas Keymer of Kidwelly (1722-1784) ), à la chinoise

This early portrait by Gavin Hamilton, painted in 1754 when he was thirty years into a career that would pivot dramatically toward history painting, depicts Thomas Keymer of Kidwelly in a chinoiserie-influenced manner — a fashionable Rococo taste that Hamilton would later entirely abandon. Hamilton spent much of his career in Rome, where he became one of the founding figures of Neoclassicism alongside Mengs and Winckelmann. By 1754 he was already in contact with the antiquarian circles that would shape his mature work. The portrait's chinoiserie mode (indicated by the phrase à la chinoise in the title) reflects the mid-century European fashion for Chinese aesthetic motifs, which penetrated aristocratic portraiture as a mark of cosmopolitan taste. The National Trust collection holds this work as an example of Hamilton before his Neoclassical transformation — a rare glimpse of a major figure in the moment of his formation.

Hamilton's early portrait handling reflects the conventions of British portraiture in the 1750s, influenced by the Kneller and Hudson tradition he would have encountered before his Roman travels. The chinoiserie setting or costume elements add decorative incident to a standard half-length formula. The face is rendered with careful observation within the smooth finishing conventions of the period.