Born in 1929, Donald Hamilton Fraser studied at St Martin's School of Art, London from 1949 to 1952 and gained a French Government Scholarship to Paris in 1953 where he lived and worked for two years (1953-54). In 1957 he became Visiting Tutor at the Royal College of Art, London, where he remained until 1983.
Fraser has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout the UK, Europe, the United States and Japan. He continued to exhibit here throughout the fifties and sixties and at Paul Rosenberg, New York throughout the sixties and seventies. Amongst his other early one-man shows were exhibitions at Galerie Craven, Paris (1957) and at Gimpel-Hanover Gallery, Zurich (1967). Fraser showed extensively at the Bohun Gallery, Henley-on-Thames between 1977 and 1994, and at Gallery 10, London and the CCA Gallery, London, from the eighties. Much of his recent work is commission-based for corporation collections throughout Europe.
Exhibitions include:
1953 'British Romantic Painting in the 20th Century', Gimpel Fils, London
1957-8 'Six British Painters', held in Chicago, Buffalo and Ottawa
1963 'British Art Today', held at the Dallas Museum of Art and touring to Santa Barbara and San Francisco
1977 '25 Years of British Painting', held at the Royal Academy
1980 'Ten British Painters', Israel Museum, Jerusalem
1995 'British Landscape Painting', Hong Kong
1997 'Royal Academicians in Dubrovnik', organised by the British Council
Donald Hamilton Fraser was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1970, Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Art in 1983 and was elected Royal Academician in 1985 (ARA 1975). He was a member of the Royal Fine Art Commission from 1986 to 2000, Honorary Curator of the Royal Academy from 1992 to 2000 and a Trustee of the Royal Academy from 1994 to 2000. He is Vice-President of the Royal Overseas League and the Artists' General Benevolent Institution. Donald Hamilton Fraser lived and worked in Henley-on-Thames.
Recent solo exhibitions:
2000 W H Patterson Fine Art, London
1998 City Gallery, London
1996 A T Kearney Corporation, London
1994-97 New Academy Gallery, London (two exhibitions)
1993 Flying Colours Gallery, Edinburgh
1990-92 Bunkamura Gallery, Tokyo (two exhibitions)
1988-97 Kingfisher Gallery, Edinburgh (three exhibitions)
1987-94 CCA Gallery, London (six exhibitions)
Public collections:
HM The Queen
Albright-Knox Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts
City Art Gallery, St Louis, Missouri
Wadsworth Athenaeum, Hartford, Connecticut
Desert Museum, Palm Springs, California
Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh
Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, Connecticut
National Gallery, New South Wales, Melbourne
Arts Council of Great Britain
British Government Art Collection
Deutsche Bank
City Art Galleries:
Hull, Nottingham, Reading, Cheltenham, Southampton, Guildford
Publications:
Gauguin's 'Vision after the Sermon', Cassell, London, 1968
'Dancers', Phaidon Press, Oxford, 1989
