James Moore O'Donnell 1770-1806 (c.1795-96). Hamilton, Hugh Douglas 1739-1808. Hamilton was one of the most important Irish portrait painters of the second half of the eighteenth century. From the early 1760s until 1779, he worked in London, where he numbered members of the Royal family and numerous nobility among his sitters. He spent a number of years in Italy, before returning to Dublin in 1792. His work thereafter was exclusively in oil (he had previously worked mainly in pastel and chalk). The sitter in this portrait, James Moore O'Donnell, was the second son of Sir Neal O'Donnell of Newport, Co. Mayo, and was M.P. for Ratoath, Co. Meath, in Grattan's Parliament, 1798-1800. He was killed in a duel near Enniscrone, Co. Sligo, in September 1806. The painting was probably a pendant to the portrait of Colonel Hugh O'Donnell, also held by the museum.